like ice
by Alanabloom
Summary: Vauseman Titanic AU. In which Piper Chapman is a bored but conditioned high society girl, traveling first class with her obscenely wealthy parents and fiancé, Larry Bloom; Alex Vause is a ruffian semi-homeless artist who's never once dressed or acted like a "lady", coming aboard with a steerage ticket won with a lucky hand of poker.
1. Chapter 1

**Wednesday, April 10, 1912**

* * *

Alex Vause changes her life with two Kings (hearts, spades) and three nines (everything but clubs).

They're playing with her own deck of cards this round: worn at the edges, a cigarette burn over the King of Hearts in her hand. There is a pile in the center of the splintered table, and in it sits everything of value she owns, short of two packs of cigarettes and her art supplies.

If she loses this hand, she'll have to smoke instead of eat for the next few days, but she lives precariously close to that possibility even on best days, so it is not much to lose. The sunlight catches and glints on a gold necklace lying among the money; it had been a gift from one of her Parisian women, never worn by Alex. It's inclusion in the bet is the reason for the steerage ticket on the RMS Titanic, a counter show of bravado from her opponent, one of several Swedish men she'd started drinking and playing poker with an hour ago.

The bar is right by the docks, the ship they call unsinkable looming luxurious through the window as though to remind her of the potential prize. Alex had come to the area specifically to catch a glimpse of the ship before its maiden voyage, but without giving a thought to its destination.

Yet as soon as Sven recklessly added his own ticket to America, Alex had begun, somewhat shockingly, to _want_ something.

But Sven is so blustering and confident, flecks of condescension still stuck in his eyes when he looks at her, as though he cannot believe a woman, even a woman like her, could possibly beat him when it really counts.

His smug little smile when he reveals a straight makes her momentarily forget everything but the victory, the spiteful pleasure of proving him wrong, and so Alex spreads out her full house with an understated smirk of her own.

Only when horror fills the arrogant man's face with the realization of what he's lost does Alex remember what she's won.

Her smile stretches, dizzy and genuine now, and her hand makes a grab to the pile, snatching only the ticket, as though Sven might take it back.

Alex is one week shy of her twenty-first birthday; maybe enough time has passed. Maybe it's time for her to see home again - at least, the closest she has to one.

She does remember the rest, of course, sweeping the money and necklace into her rucksack, gleefully thinking to herself how fortunate it is, in moments like this, that she always carries the entirety of her belongings.

Sven grabs her arm on the table, tight, aggressive. She purses her lips and sneers at him, "You such a poor loser you'd hit a lady?"

He says something derisive in a language Alex doesn't understand, but she doesn't have to know the words. It has the cadence of a comment she's heard countless times: she's no lady, not with her cigarettes or her cursing or the trousers she's long preferred over dresses.

Or the tough, heavy boots she's wearing, the ones that make it possible for her to drive the toe hard into the back of Sven's heel, right at the sensitive spot. Howling, he buckles at the knee and his grip on her loosens. Quickly scooping up the rest of the money littering the table, Alex slings her bag over her shoulder and turns to go, flashing her sweetest smile over her shoulder.. "I'll wave to you from the deck."

A mad run through the crowd and a quick lie to the officer - _yes_ , of course she's gone through inspection - and just like that Alex is on board to leave the continent where she's lived for nearly three years. This is the freedom of her life; there is no one to inform, no one to say goodbye to.

* * *

The RMS Titanic is being hailed as the grandest ship in the world, but Piper Chapman is far beyond being impressed by mere luxury.

Perhaps that's an unfavorable character trait, only emphasizing what is enviable and spoiling about her upbringing, but it can't be helped. Her life is and has always been a parade of opulence, and by virtue of this, the grand has become the mundane. She is ready for this voyage to be over only so she can stop hearing the fuss about this unsinkable boat. It bores her.

But then, almost everything bores her, these days.

Larry - that's Lawrence Jonathan Bloom III to most people - was raised in common grandeur, as well, and yet somehow he's never unimpressed, already beaming in wonder at the ship as he helps her from the touring car. As usual, it makes her feel inadequate. Everyone else is so easily pleased and consistently satisfied; she seems to be the only one who isn't capable. As if she's missing a piece somewhere.

Her mother and father follow behind them, Carol Chapman murmuring her own approving observations while Bill Chapman ignores it to call orders to the valets and maids, currently assisting cargo handlers with their embarrassing amount of luggage.

Piper sighs and crooks her arm habitually through Larry's elbow, grateful once again that his own parents hadn't joined them on this trip. The combination of Bill Chapman and Lawrence Bloom, Jr. is often too much to take.

"Must say, it doesn't bode well for me that you're so difficult to impress, darling." Larry says to her. He's likely teasing, but Piper bristles anyway.

"I haven't said a single word."

"You don't have to. It's evident from your face."

"Oh, so you read my mind now?"

"Surely at this stage you can offer me some credit for knowing you, Piper."

She feels like refusing, but there would be no real credence to an argument. He has, in fact, known her for the entirety of her life, and after seventeen years Piper has only two secrets to her name.

She doesn't remember ever deciding to marry Larry, or even to love him. She suspects she was born with the expectation of that precise future draped over her shoulders; she has no memory of what it was like to live without the weight. Over the past year, however, the union has gone from expected to essential for her parents: unbeknownst to the Bloom family, Bill Chapman has made some individual poor investments - and, Piper heavily suspects, poor gambling decisions. Their name is still good, but jeopardizing her father's potential partnership with Larry and his father would not be an option.

That's the first secret.

The second is that Piper is often desperately, fatally unhappy, and she's often terrified she's not capable of anything else.

* * *

Alex finds her spot in Third Class Berthing, a tiny cubicle with two sets of bunk beds, exposed pipes on the walls, and three Swedish men who gape at her with dumbfounded expressions when she enters.

She doesn't relish this, sleeping with strange men close by, but it's something she's used to. She spins a pocket knife idly between her fingers and merely nods shortly at them while she tosses her bag on the open top bunk.

* * *

Privately, Piper finds the name "Millionaire Suite" somewhat ostentatious, but of course her family has snagged both of them. She is to share one with her parents - there are two bedrooms, in addition to a sitting room, wardrobe room, and private promenade deck - but Larry is lingering in their sitting room as she, along with her maid Catherine, unpacks the paintings she'd bought in Europe, the best part about this trip, and eyes the walls thoughtfully, fully engaged in something for the first time all day.

"You do realize we're only at sea for a week," Larry tells her in this new voice he's picked up recently, both amused and condescending. It's the way her father talks to her mother - on his good days - and Piper doesn't care for it at all.

"Philistine," she mutters between her teeth, a frequently repeated insult. "Just because you have no appreciation for art doesn't mean I have to lower my own. If you all insist we need all this - " She waves an impatient hand at the luxury of the room. "- for only a week's journey, I doubt my decorating is the most irrational aspect."

Larry looks put out. He scowls at her like a petulant little boy. "If an appreciation for art means staring at mud puddles all day - "

"At least they were cheap," Bill interrupts, swapping a knowing look with his future son-in-law. "Count your blessings there, my boy; it won't be the end of expensive indulgences."

Her father's voice neatly squashes Piper's rising desire to argue, and she begins searching the pile of trunks for the one with her books.

"Need help finding something?" Larry asks, coming up behind her.

"My books. They were in the red trunk…"

"I put it in your bedroom," he tells her, and before she can thank him he adds, "Unless you want to organize them on shelves for the week?"

She throws him a look. "I didn't bring enough for it to be worth it. That's what I'm most looking forward to about getting home…back to the library again."

His eyebrows go up. "That's what you're _most_ looking forward to?"

Her parents look over at the same time, and Piper instantly realizes her mistake. She knows to save it, to tilt a teasing smile. "Why? Is there something else exciting happening? Anything I should be counting down to?"

Larry smiles back, too delighted by the rare playfulness. "I feel like there's some sort of party…something at a church…?"

Pulling a face of exaggerated confusion, Piper shrugs. "I'm still not sure. Hopefully I remember in time."

He laughs, gratified, and her parents return to their own tasks.

The wedding. Only a week after their return to the States, the invitations already in the hands of anybody who's anybody in Connecticut high society. Her dress, waiting at the seamstress's, is beautiful. Everything is beautiful.

The failing is not in the wedding, or in Larry - kind, dutiful Larry, her lifelong friend. The family's savior.

Anyone but Piper would be thrilled.

Now, Larry offers his arm again, sweetening his smile. "Care to take a stroll out to the deck? See if we can find a view the might impress you?"

Piper takes his arm and agrees with a smile, because she truly doesn't _want_ to be like this. She wishes she could find beauty outside of canvases, feel deeply about something that doesn't exist in a world between book covers.

But she knows the exact course her life is set to run, and in all that certainty, it's hard to imagine anything changing.

* * *

Alex is settled on a bench on the lowest deck, her leather bound sketching pad resting against her knees, black conte crayon dusting her fingers black as she draws. The sun is warm, the constant rush of water an almost soothing hum. There's nothing in the world to complain about, short of the breeze keeping the corners of her pages fluttering as she works, but Alex is a largely outdoor artist, so she's more than accustomed to the condition.

With rapid, confident strokes she sketches her fellow third class passengers, delighted by the plethora of subjects in her surroundings who seem perfectly content to stay in one place, obviously preferring the open air of the deck to the cramped third class sleeping quarters or the dimly lit general room.

She finishes a quick rendering of a man holding his young daughter up on the lower run of the ship's railing, pointing out seagulls while the little girl grins delightedly. Alex pulls out a blank sheet, scanning her surroundings for another subject.

Her eyes drift and somehow aim themselves up to the railing of the higher deck promenade; she can only see a few clusters of first class passengers, but her eyes land on a girl in a blue dress and an absolutely absurd hat, leaning very slightly against the rail.

And staring right at Alex.

Their eyes meet, and the first class girl's dart away in an instant, but Alex keeps her gaze where it is, oddly and quickly riveted. She's beautiful, even at a distance, the kind of beauty Alex's fingers itch to capture, but it's more than that. She looks like a figure in a romantic novel. Gorgeous. Sad. Isolated.

She looks back at Alex. This time, her eyes hold on.

Before Alex even realizes what she's doing, she's half risen from the bench, as though it isn't impossible for her to simply walk up to this girl and speak to her, say anything, really -

But then a man comes up behind her, and the girl turns to face him, smiling in a way that makes her look like everyone else. Alex lowers her weight again, feeling silly. She resumes her search for someone to sketch, restricting her gaze to the lowest deck where it belongs.

* * *

Predictably, Piper's stroll with Larry doesn't last very long before they bump into gentlemen who recognize him, thus apparently obligating him to join them in a circle of remarks about the ship's beauty. It's all just a way of congratulating themselves on this luxury they can afford, and Piper excuses herself quickly and paces away from the conversation, standing near the railing to study the more bustling activity of the deck below.

Her eyes land on someone sitting on a bench against the railing, bent over a sketching pad, drawing. At first, Piper thinks it's a man with appallingly long hair - her father had said, distastefully, that third class would be full of emigrants, so who knew what their standards might be - but then the artist's lifts her head to check her subjects and Piper sees she's clearly a woman.

Albeit, a woman in slacks, a rumpled white shirt, and suspenders. Piper's mother would be scandalized. She's wearing thin round eyeglasses, and as Piper watches she sweeps long black hair away from her face and continues drawing.

Piper keeps watching her, strangely captivated; she's obviously drawing the father with his little girl, about ten feet away from her bench, and it's with surprising fervency that Piper finds herself wishing she could see the page from here.

Then the woman looks up, right at Piper, and she jerks her eyes away, cheeks flaming with embarrassment at being caught. She pretends to scan the crowd idly, like she's simply taking in the entire area, but when she finally allows herself to look back and check, the woman is still staring.

This time, Piper can't look away.

Until, that is, Larry's hand lands lightly on her back and Pipershe turns to find his apologizing grin. "Sorry, didn't mean to get caught up."

She feels strangely guilty, for some reason, so Piper smiles at him and quickly answers, "It's fine. No need to apologize.

Larry leans against the railing beside her, drawing in a deep, content breath of ocean air. "Lovely, isn't it?"

"It is," she echoes absently, checking on the drawing woman again, empty disappointment thudding hollow in Piper's chest when she's no longer paying attention.

"We should head back," Larry says. "I promised the gents your father and I would meet for cigars before dinner."

Throwing him a sardonic look, Piper intones, "I assume that won't take the place of _after_ dinner cigars."

"You're welcome to join us in the cloud of smoke," he jokes, not meaning it at all - she _wouldn_ 't be welcome, in fact, but they both know she has no interest anyway.

"I'll leave you to it. But you go ahead, I may stay out for a bit."

"Shouldn't you dress for dinner soon?"

"I will. Soon. Not now."

Larry shrugs, agreeable, and leaves with promises to see her at dinner. Piper returns her attention to the lower deck; the woman's head is bent low again, her hand sweeping across a page. As she watches, Piper reaches up and unpins her hat; the sun is lower on the horizon. Soon there won't be enough light for the artist to draw.

Telling herself that if everyone is so determinedly obsessed with the size of this ship, it's perfectly natural to want to explore its entirety, Piper unlatches the gate that leads into second and third classes, intending to get a look from closer to the water.

* * *

Maybe half an hour after she first noticed her, Alex looks up at the two boys she's drawing - about nine or ten years old, on their knees on the deck with an unsteady game of jacks - and sees the first class girl edging along the railing.

A few steerage men who pass by stop and stare at her, she's so blatantly out of place. She's toying with that ridiculous hat nervously in her hands, and her cheeks are pink, though that could be the wind.

And she keeps darting glances at Alex.

Ducking her head to hide a smile, Alex continues with her sketching, looking up for reference a bit more often than is necessary, but only keeping the girl in her peripheral vision, never letting on that she's watching. The blonde, on the other hand, is woefully unskilled at subtly, her attention to Alex somehow all the more obvious because of how much she's trying to hide it.

It's not that Alex isn't used to stares from girls like this. She is rough and unladylike, and usually alone, with often provokes a sort of horrified fascination. But whatever Alex thought she saw in the girl's face earlier, in the moments before the man approached and a mask slipped back into place, has her curious about this one.

A woman calls out in Italian and the little boys go running, taking their game with them. Alex could finish the drawing without the visual, but the light is poor and the deck is starting to clear out.

On a risky whim, she closes her sketching pad and sets it on the bench beside her, then lights a cigarette and takes a few drags. It's just for show, a way to kill a few moments before she can realistically stand up and wander away, deliberately leaving her sketches behind.

She doesn't have to get far before she's proven right; she glances over her shoulder just before rounding a corner out of sight, and the girl is standing over the bench, the book in her hand.

* * *

To Piper's disappointment it doesn't matter how close she manages to sidle: with the pad on her knees, facing the water, Piper can't get an angle to see the drawing.

Then the woman sets the pad aside and lights a cigarette - no holder, unsurprisingly. The crowd around them is starting to thin, and it makes Piper feel too conspicuous. She really should go dress for dinner, but there's something entrancing about this woman, with her men's clothing and charcoal stained fingers. Piper's never seen anything quite like her.

She stands up to leave, and again Piper feels a dull drumming of disappointment that's quickly quashed when she realizes the sketching pad is still sitting on the bench.

Piper hurriedly approaches, intending on calling out to the woman and handing it back, but she's positively tingling with curiosity, and as she tucks her hat under her arm and picks up the book she has the horrible thought that she could simply track the woman down and give it to her later, no need to explain when exactly she found it -

"You gonna steal that?"

Startled, Piper looks up to see the woman smirking at her. In spite of the words, she doesn't seem angry; just amused.

"Of course not," she stammers, extending the book like it's something lethal.

The woman doesn't take it. Her lips curve into a slow, easy grin. "Good. I was gonna say, come down from first class just to steal from us low lives? That's almost appallingly greedy."

Piper's face is hot. Up close, the woman is younger than she thought; she can't be much more than twenty. And there's something frazzling and intense about her gaze behind those glasses; her eyes are never still, roaming across Piper's face like she's something to sketch. "I was just going to check for a name," she blurts out, which seems like an intelligent excuse for all of two seconds.

"Ah," the woman nods. "Got it. S'pose you didn't notice me the whole time I was sitting there. Or that I was still in shouting distance. Or maybe shouting's not proper? If that's true, never mind, not your fault."

"Here," Piper takes a step forward, her arm straight out with the sketching pad, insistent. She isn't looking the woman in the eye.

"No hurry," the woman says, sounding cheerful and genuine. "You can look if you want."

But all Piper wants to get out of there, away from her own embarrassment. She sets the book down the bench and does a panicked little half-curtsy, half-nod, muttering, "My apologies," even as she hurries away, back to the safety of the first class deck.

* * *

The girl had looked so genuinely humiliated that Alex almost regrets setting the trap. At the same time, it's been awhile since she got a pretty girl so flustered. And it's not as though Alex could have really approached her without excuse.

She's itching to draw her, so she skips dinner to return to her bunk, fairly certain she'll find it empty of the others, a requirement if she's going to linger than.

The girl's face is so vivid in her head it's a little miraculous, and when Alex is satisfied with her work she leaves the sketching pad tucked beneath her mattress and returns to the deck, stretching out on another bench toward the stern of the sip, blowing into the sky and reveling in the first moments of quiet the day has offered.

The stars are gorgeous, freckling the infinite sky above infinite ocean, and it makes her think again of where they're going. Docking in New York City, in less than a week; shouldn't be difficult from there for her to make her way home.

If she still wants to. Not that there's any hurry.

She's wondering if there will be anything there for her to recognize when a blur of a person runs past her bench, startling her out of the troubling question.

* * *

Piper shakes the encounter with the artist woman off fairly quickly, focusing on the - according to her mother - monumentally important task of dressing for their first dinner aboard the Titanic.

"Your father says we've been invited to join Bruce Ismay and Thomas Andrews at their table. Of course you realize what an honor that is, everyone will be _green_ with envy..."

Larry and her father return to the suites to collect them, and they join a dinner table that does in fact include the ship's builder and the White Star Line manager, as well as many of the other richest passengers, which she's certain disappoints her mother. The meal passes pleasantly enough, though the ship itself is still dominating discussion.

When the men depart again for more cigars and likely some brandy to go along with it, Larry trailing after her father like an obedient puppy, the wives - and, in some cases, mistresses - stay behind, and Carol smoothly steers the conversation to Piper's wedding.

It's not a conversation Piper needs to be present for, her mother rattling off details and mentioning Piper's choices as though she's not even in the room. She's been listening to her mother obsess over every fine point of the wedding for months now, and is usually adept at tuning it out. But now, there's something different.

It suddenly sounds so _immediate_.

"Next week will be an absolute nightmare, I'm sure," her mother says in a voice that suggests nightmares are something she relishes. "In fact we very nearly took a voyage on an earlier ship, just to be certain there would be time for all the final touches - but Bill was insistent on holding out for Titanic. Entirely worth it, of course, but will leave us almost no time for rest...Piper's got a final fitting the day we arrive..."

Her corset feels too tight, all of a sudden. No, it feels like it's actually _tightening_ , right now, like an invisible pair of hands is yanking at the lacing on her back, so hard she can feel her ribs sagging to make room, bones crushed against lungs.

Her eyes fall on the ring on her left hand and the diamond's shine makes her dizzy. Piper bolts abruptly to her feet, the floor feels tilted beneath her, no one else seems to notice how hard the ocean is rocking them, surely a ship of this size shouldn't tilt...

Or no, it must be the air here, the suffocating air of a brand new dining saloon, she can't breathe in it, can barely muster the air required to mutter an, "If you'll excuse me," before she leaves.

She sucks in a breath as soon as she steps out into night air, but it only seems to make it as far as her throat. There are people out and about, admiring the view of stars above ocean, but slowly they turn to stare at Piper. Her whole body is trembling; she feels boxed in.

Then, for no real reason, she starts to run, hiking her dress up in shaking hands, perhaps not the best course of action when she's struggling to breathe, but something is _wrong_ , and her body seems to think it can run away from it.

Irrationally, she's thinking no one should see her like this, and everywhere there are stares, so she runs to the stairs for the stern deck, seemingly deserted. As soon as she low enough to be out of sight, Piper hits her knees on the deck, swallowing big gulps of salty air.

Oh, God, she's made such a mistake, there's obviously something really wrong with her, she feels like she might actually die, and no one will find her here, but then -

"Hey, easy..." It's a low, quiet voice, and it's close. Her vision is blurry when she opens her eyes, but Piper can still make out the pants and suspenders, the curtain of black hair. The artist kneels down in front of her, a few feet away. "Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?"

Piper shakes her head fervently, so hard a few pieces of her hair fall loose. "I can't...I don't...I...I..." The words slip out in breathless whimpers. Her chest is starting to ache.

"Whoa, okay...it's okay...you just need to breathe, alright? In and out, here..." The woman actually _touches_ her, bare fingers on Piper's cheek. Her hands are warm. "Breathe for me. Nice and slow, c'mon...In...out..."

Somehow Piper can hear the deliberate rhythm of the woman's breathing, and with great effort, she manages to match it.

"There you go, that's it..." Her voice is unfailingly patient. Her hands are still cupping Piper's face. "You're okay."

When Piper starts to feel a little calmer, she realizes there are tears on her face. "I'm sorry." Her voice stumbles, still weak. "I don't know what got into me..."

"Get caught stealing again?" The woman asks, warm and somehow gentle even in the teasing. "By someone less merciful than me, maybe?"

Against all odds, Piper hears herself laughing. It eases the pressure on her chest, a little. She realizes she's still sitting on the deck, and quickly gets to her feet. The woman stands at the same time, offering a hand; Piper lets her help without thinking about it.

"I seem to be intent on humiliating myself in front of you."

"Better me than someone up your way, right?" The woman says, tilting a lopsided grin at her. "I'll just write it off as _rich people are nuts._ "

"You wouldn't be wrong," Piper blurts out, unthinking, and it makes the woman laugh.

It surprises her. And she likes it.

"Honestly, are you alright?" The woman is peering at her the same way she had earlier: intense, artist eyes, like she's memorizing her face, but searching for something beyond it, too.

"Fine," Piper insists, slowly trying to gather her dignity. "Just felt a bit...overwhelmed. Temporarily."

The woman just nods. "Alright."

Piper feels the awkwardness of the moment, how alone they are. "I should be getting back. I appreciate, your, um...your assistance, Miss...?"

She trails off, a question in her voice, and this seems to make the woman smile again. "Vause," she provides.

"Miss Vause - "

"Alex is fine."

Piper doesn't correct herself, just nods once, flustered by the interruption. "Goodnight. And thank you, again."

But as she walks away, the woman's first name rounds in her throat, like it wants to be said, and Piper mouths it silently to herself only when she's back on the B deck.

 _Alex_.

Fitting, she thinks. A man's name, to go along with men's clothes.

But so pretty.

With soft, careful hands. Feminine hands, artist's hands, capable of scooping Piper's panic up with their palms.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: So thrilled with the response to this one so far, y'all. I'm super excited about it. And apparently my fic compulsion is harder to ignore when I'm on "vacation" to see family. More soon! Let me know what you think of this one.  
_

* * *

 **Thursday, April 11, 1912**

* * *

The next day, Piper carries a book with her to tea despite the disapproving glances from her mother, and abandons the ladies' post-tea stroll to find a place to read. There are steamer chairs all along the upper deck, but she walks by plenty of open spaces without sitting down.

She hadn't slept well last night, alternately berating herself for the inappropriate display, wondering what the hell is wrong with her that she broke down like that at all, and, sometimes, thinking about that woman.

 _Alex_.

Twice now Piper's made an utter fool of herself in front of her, and it bothers Piper more than it should - after all, Alex is a complete stranger, and it's highly improbable their paths will ever cross again. But in spite of the teasing out Alex had given her, Piper doesn't like the idea of being written off as an incomprehensible rich person.

So when she finds a deck chair at the very edge of the A deck promenade, Piper has an unusually difficult time becoming absorbed in her book. She keeps pulling her attention elsewhere to give the lower deck a cursory scan. It's obviously the most lively third class area, teeming with families and clusters of friends, but apparently the allure of so many subjects in one spot isn't enough to draw Alex out today.

Piper forcibly puts it out of her mind, trying to enjoy the book and the sunlight; it _is_ a lovely day, and a perfect reading spot. She actually passes a few hours without looking up from the pages.

However, when she does finally give up on reading for the time being and, allowing herself to check again, still doesn't see Alex, Piper decides to look for her. She has a genuine reason to seek her out this time, rather than mere curiosity; after last night, a more clearheaded apology and _thank_ _you_ is hardly out of place.

She circles the parts of the ship that give her a clear view of the lower sections, but finally has to venture down herself. She's rewarded after only a few minutes of the search, finding Alex sitting on a bench out of view. She's smoking again, but not drawing, though her leather pad is resting beside her.

Determined to conduct herself better this time, Piper approaches her. "Hello again."

Alex looks up, shielding her eyes with one hand and squinting into the sunlight. She grins. "Well, hey. You sure like slumming it down here, huh?"

"Actually, I've been looking for you."

"Great. Want to sit?" She slides to the end of the bench, picking up her sketchbook and setting it on her lap instead.

Piper hesitates for a moment before settling down beside her. She takes a moment to rearrange the skirt of her dress before starting, "Miss Vause - "

"Alex."

She nods, says it this time. "Alex - "

"You got a name?"

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, that's so rude of me...Piper Chapman."

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Chapman" Alex says in an overly formal voice that Piper's pretty sure is meant to make fun of her. Piper can feel her polite face slipping into a scowl, and it makes Alex laugh. "Sorry. What were you saying, _Piper_?"

"I want to thank you, again. For last night. I...wasn't at my best."

"Nothing to worry about," she says easily. "How are you feeling today?"

"Fine," she says, fast and firm. "Honestly. I know how that must have seemed but...that wasn't typical behavior for me."

"Well, I figured that much." Piper frowns a little, but before she can discern what _that_ is meant to imply, Alex adds, "I'm just glad you're okay."

"Well. Thank you. You're nice."

"Only sometimes," Alex quips with a smirk. Piper laughs, but stops abruptly when two third class women walk by, blatantly staring at the two of them. She lowers her eyes, suddenly uncomfortable.

In contrast, Alex's tone is unruffled when she asks conversationally, "What are you reading?"

"Oh..." Piper tilts the book's cover for her to see. " _The House of Mirth._ Edith Wharton. Do you know it?"

"Don't think so."

"Oh, it's fantastic, this is my third time reading it. I can find so few books about women, they almost always become my favorites. The main character, Lily, she's so tragic..." And Piper's off, expanding on the novel's plot, her voice brimming over with enthusiasm.

Alex turns toward her on the bench to listen, and she seems bright eyed and patient, so it takes Piper awhile before she remembers herself. She halts her monologue mid-sentence, wincing a little. She's doing it again: presuming interest. "Sorry. You probably don't want to hear the entire plot."

"No, it sounds good. I'll have to borrow a copy when we're back on land...once I find a bookstore with an unobservant owner."

Piper's mouth falls open, just a little. "You _steal books_?"

"Of course not. I _borrow_."

"What's the difference?"

"I bring them back. Usually within a day or two. No harm done."

"If you have to hide it, it's still wrong," Piper informs her, with a distant awareness of how snotty she sounds. "You _have_ heard of libraries, right?"

"Of course. Sometimes I borrow from there."

"Well, that's better."

"Not really. I still have to sneak them out, so it's all the same when it comes down to it."

"Why would you have to _sneak_ out of a library?"

"No library card. You need an address for one of those, and I usually don't have one."

That revelation stalls Piper's momentum, and she just blinks at Alex, dumbfounded. She knew the third class was poor, but she's actually homeless?

Alex just smiles, seeming to enjoy Piper's shock. "I don't steal much, if it makes you feel better. Food, water...only what I absolutely need. And I think books count as essential to survival."

That makes Piper smile. "I feel the same way, actually. My parents, they even say I read _too_ much. Only when I beg to skip dinners or engagements because I'm at a really good part in a book. That's what I miss about being in school, always reading and talking about what we've read. Now I just tend to go on and on about books to whoever will listen...which I've just proven to you."

"You could go to university, right?" Alex says, obviously assuming Piper's from the sort of family who could afford it.

Her smile falters. "I wanted to." Bitterness sticks to the words like a stubborn shadow. "My father believes the purpose of university for girls is to find a suitable husband, and, well..." She holds out her left hand for inspection. "For me that's redundant."

"Jesus." Alex wraps her fingers under Piper's hand, lifting it to get a better look at the diamond, but Piper becomes instantly distracted by the unexpected touch. "That's quite a fucking rock, huh?" The language snaps Piper out of her momentary daze. She looks up, meeting Alex's eyes. "When's the big day?"

"A week after we dock."

Alex lets out a low whistle. "Shit." She's quiet for a moment, their eyes still locked on each other, until at the same instant both seem to realize she's still holding on. Alex drops Piper's hand. "So he's traveling with you?"

"Yes. Along with my parents. How about you?"

"Hmm? Oh, it's just me."

"How long have you been in Europe?"

"Little over three years now."

"Oh." Piper's eyes widen in surprise. "I see. What made you decide to go back now?"

Alex steeples her fingers together and leans her head back on her hands, grinning up at Piper. "Opportunity." Off Piper's confused expression, she adds, "I won a ticket in a poker game. About ten minutes before the ship left."

"Jesus," Piper blurts out, unthinking. "I mean...wow. That's very...spontaneous of you." She's quiet for a moment, wishing now she hadn't spent so much time describing the narrative of a fictional character. She wants, suddenly, to hear Alex's life story in its entirety, certain any detail would be enthralling. There's so much she wants to ask she can barely choose. "Why did you leave America?"

Alex shrugs vaguely. "I like to move around. I'd been in Los Angeles for a few months. Would hang around near the pier in Santa Monica - there's even a roller coaster there, so there's always a crowd. I'd do portraits for ten cents apiece."

Piper wrinkles her nose. "Ten cents?"

"Yeah, good money...could make almost two dollars on the best days, but only in the summer. When the vacationers stopped coming, I decided to head to Paris and check out the real art scene. Trouble in Paris is, no one's that impressed by art that's not theirs. So it didn't bring much in the way of money."

Piper's eyeing the sketchbook in Alex's lap, the same sort of longing she'd felt yesterday swelling in her chest. Alex follows her gaze, and promptly picks the pad up and offers it. "Feel free."

Fingers tingling in eager anticipation, Piper takes the book and opens it.

She finds beauty inside, pages and pages bursting with warmth and humanity. Almost always people, but sometimes more isolated body parts: hands, eyes. Frequently, there are nudes, sometimes several in a row, but Piper can scarcely go three pages without encountering another. Women, all of them, and Piper feels heat rising to her cheeks that she fervently hopes isn't visible. There is a languid beauty to each subject, obvious care given to the expressiveness of their features, but there's something uncomfortable here, too. Something almost intimate.

Piper lowers her face even more, feigning concentration, all the while wondering if this is normal, if all female artists do this, if it's considered appropriate. But she can feel Alex watching her, and she has no desire to expose herself as a naive, sheltered child, so she fights to keep her expression unruffled.

She stops and lingers on a sketch of a woman; older than the others, and fully clothed in a moth eaten dress and a hat with a rip along the seam. Her lips are right on the edge of a smile, and there's such an inviting tenderness to the portrait that Piper's chest unexpectedly twinges. Her eyes suggest a heart so big and open one could fall right into it.

For the first time since she took the book, Piper looks over at Alex. "Who is this?"

Alex is closer than she realized, leaning over so she can follow Piper's progress, but now her eyes are boring into Piper's. "Her name's Diane." She pauses, then, "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. There's something about her eyes, the warmth there...you've truly captured something, Alex. I mean, these are all amazing, you're incredibly talented. But this one...that a drawing alone can make me certain I would like her. That's extraordinary."

Alex's face softens, and Piper can see her throat working as she swallows. Her voice is quieter than Piper's heard it yet when she offers, "She was my mom." A heartbeat of a pause, and then, "I think she'd have liked you, too."

"Oh." Piper has to fight not to look away, strangely overwhelmed by the statement. After a moment, she asks softly, "Was?"

"She died. Been awhile now, I was fifteen."

"Oh." Piper cringes at her own poor manners. "Oh, Alex, I'm sorry. That's awful. What about your father?"

"He was gone long before that," Alex says simply, then without missing a beat taps a finger the the pages. "Keep going, you're coming to the good stuff."

Dutifully, Piper keeps turning, and within a few pages she comes to sketches obviously done on the ship, passengers from varying distances, many more than just what Piper watched her churn out yesterday. Most of these people must be strangers, and yet there's such fullness to the depictions, as though Alex can see straight down to the heart of a person with just a first glance.

Feeling bold, Piper meets her eyes again. "Have you drawn me?"

A crooked smirk breathes life back into Alex's expression. "Was wondering if you'd ask."

She leans enough to turn the book toward her, flipping through pages, close enough that Piper can't help but breathe in her scent, cigarettes and sea, like the salt air somehow clings more stubbornly to her. She only remembers to be nervous about the drawing when Alex is already returning the pad, Piper's likeness staring up at them from the page.

It's not posed, there's not even a background, which isn't surprising. There is just her face, and the briefest hint of neck and shoulders.

She is beautiful, the way Alex sees her.

She is also heartbreaking.

"Why make me look like that?"

"Like what, exactly?"

"You obviously know." The edge of her voice sharpens with aggression, the voice her mother hates. "So..." Here, Piper fumbles. She can't decide exactly, sadness or fear, but either way she doesn't like it. "...unhappy."

Alex isn't reacting, which is a little infuriating. "I don't plan the sketches, Piper. This is just how it came out."

A unattractive, decidedly unladylike scoffing sound leapfrogs out of her throat before Piper can stop it. "You make it sound as though it's entirely out of your control."

"I just draw what I see," she says evenly.

"Look, just because you caught me at a low moment last night, doesn't mean it's representative - "

"I did this yesterday afternoon...after I caught you with my book."

This throws Piper off, momentarily, and she stammers slightly on the retort, "Well, then this is even more absurd. I'm not some miserable person...quite the contrary, I'm engaged, on the way back for my _wedding -_ "

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks," Alex murmurs.

Piper folds her arms, annoyed. " _You_ know Shakespeare?"

"Don't sound so shocked. Your finishing school isn't the only place with copies. And I saw Hamlet performed in London last summer."

"Really?"

"Mmm-hmmm. Took me three nights to see it all from the back wall, but I think I pieced it together."

Piper looks away, a pang of something remarkably similar to envy clanging in her gut.

Even with her eyes focused elsewhere, she can feel the weight of Alex's gaze. After a bit, Alex cuts through the stubborn silence with, "This wedding you're so thrilled to get back for...it wouldn't have anything to do with your _episode_ last night, would it?"

Piper jerks her head to look at Alex, fire eyed, and lies, "Of course not."

"Alright then. Your fiance, what's he like?"

"He's a good man," Piper informs her, defensive. "I've known him my entire life, we grew up together...our fathers often collaborate on business dealings."

"Romantic," Alex says, her voice dry as a bone. "So you love him?"

" _Excuse_ me?!"

Alex makes a face like Piper must be slow. Or hard of hearing. "Do. You. Love him?"

"That's a very rude question."

"I would think it'd be a very obvious question..."

"You don't know me well enough to ask this."

"Fine, fine, I'll make it even simpler. Do you _want_ to marry him?"

"You shouldn't be asking me that either."

Alex leans closer, across the gap Piper had very deliberately put between them, and reaching toward her. A current zips through Piper's veins, her skin tensing in anticipation of Alex's fingers, but she only knocks her knuckles against the cover of Piper's book. "You spent ten minutes telling me about a character attempting to marry someone she doesn't love for social standing. Thought there might be a reason you're so attached to the story."

Piper shoots to her feet, truly, properly angry now, glaring down at Alex and declaring, "You...are very rude." It's not enough, she's scrambling around for better accusations. "And uncouth, and _inappropriate_."

Alex lets out a bark of a laugh. "I've been told."

"Oh, I'm _certain_ you have," Piper says, her voice cold. She turns around without saying goodbye, but has barely gotten four feet before she regrets both leaving and her final comment. She'll end up having to seek Alex out again, for yet another apology.

Sighing, Piper turns around to find Alex still on the bench, watching her go. In the most mannered voice she can manage under the circumstances, Piper asks, "Would you like to go for a walk?"

Alex lifts an eyebrow. "Cause you're having so much fun insulting me?"

"I won't insult you if you stop prying."

Alex leans her head back and aims an amused smile at the sky, shaking her head a little before finally getting to her feet. "Deal."

* * *

"Ever notice that a majority of books about women _are_ about bad marriages?" Piper asks when they fall into step together, in what Alex assumes is an attempt to push through the discomfort of their conversation.

Alex nods in acknowledgement. "Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina..."

" _Exactly_ ," Piper flashes her a grateful smile. A fleeting, instinctive suspicion runs through Alex's head that most people must not listen to Piper when she talks. "It's insulting. As though the most tragic thing that could happen to us is a loveless marriage."

"It's not the _most_ tragic, sure. But I _would_ hate it. I'll never get married, and I'm glad there's no reason I have to." She feels Piper looking at her, curious, but Alex ignores that. "I am sorry, though. For the prying. You're right, it's not my business. You didn't ask me a dozen questions when I said my mom died, I shouldn't have interrogated you about your wedding."

Piper's quiet for so long Alex thinks she might ignore the apology _and_ their earlier argument, but then she says in a small voice, "Thank you for that. But it's not really the same. One's a very sad occasion, that of course you would't want to discuss...the other's happy. Or at least, it's supposed to be."

Alex turns her head the slightest bit. The muscles in Piper's jaw are tight, and her eyes are fixed straight ahead. Alex gets the sense that it's easier for her to talk about this when they're walking, not quite so intense. She waits several steps before asking, for the second time, "What's he like?"

"He really is good," she insists. "Nicer than either of our fathers, though I suppose there's still plenty of time for them to change that. It's just...I don't know that he thinks very much about things, and he's content that way. He's never once surprised me, and he'll agree with anything his father says. Or mine, for that matter." She exhales a slow, hissing breath, her eyes drifting shut. "God, I sound terrible."

"You don't."

"The problem isn't even him. It's me." She goes quiet again, until they reach the stairs to A deck. Piper holds it open and waits for Alex to follow her in; an officer glances at them but Piper expertly glares him away. "There's nothing wrong. I'm not sad, or angry. But I'm also not especially happy." She glances over and smiles thinly, and Alex's chest aches, hard. "I think I'm incapable of extremes. Or passion, no matter in which direction."

"That cannot be true."

"You've only just met me."

"Doesn't matter." Alex looks at her, and waits until Piper turns her head and catches her eye. "No one who talks the way you do about books and art can be passionless."

Piper actually stops walking, so Alex does, too. They look at each other. Piper's eyes are sad bruises, and the fading, stretched sunlight creates a halo of light behind her. Alex's pulse is wild and wanting, and she feels in that instant as though she's taken a step into nothingness, put her foot down to find no solid ground waiting, too late to go back.

Then Piper crooks a tiny, sweet smile at Alex and starts walking again. "Enough about me, I haven't done anything worth going on about. Tell me more about California, I've always wanted to go."

It takes Alex a few seconds to recover, and then she tips a grin at Piper, in control once again. "Well, we're heading in the right direction, at least. We'll go someday, you and me, I'll give a tour of Los Angeles."

"Sounds _amazing,_ " Piper says, wistful and dreamy in a way that makes Alex look at her again. Her eyes are bright, her face full of unrestrained longing and, oh, she is so _young_. Too young to be this resigned. Too young to feel so _finished_.

So Alex spins her stories, a whole tapestry of them, giving Piper pieces of the world to wish for and want. They stop walking after awhile, leaning against a railing, ignoring the kaleidoscope sunset over the ocean to look instead at each other.

A foghorn sounds, announcing dinner, and regret dashes across Piper's expression. Alex huffs an exaggerated sigh. "This the part where I get banished, huh?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep you all day."

"You kidding? It's been fun." She waves a hand and winks. "I got the first class tour."

Piper chuckles, her smile turning shy. "Well, goodnight."

"Goodnight. And, uh, listen...I hope you don't need it, but if you _do_ feel...overwhelmed, and need to hide out on the stern deck again, well. I'll be around."

"Thank you. But I'll be fine."

Alex nods; she'd expected that. She turns to go, but Piper's voice stops her.

"I would...enjoy seeing you again tomorrow, though. If you'd like." Alex turns back, and before she can answer Piper adds in a frantic rush of words, "I know you probably want to work. Sketching, I mean, but I went through all my books on the trip and honestly even just sitting and watching you draw would be more exciting than tea and gossip with my mother and the other wives, that is, if it wouldn't disturb you - "

"Piper." Alex is laughing a little, charmed by her nervousness. "That sounds great. Come find me anytime...same place?"

Piper smile breaks all the way open. "I'll find you."

Alex tilts her head and her smile, lifting a hand in a wave before she turns on her heel to go back to steerage and wait for tomorrow.

* * *

"Piper?"

Alex is barely out of sight before she hears her name, and her smile falls as she turns to see her mother, pursed lips and narrow eyes, watching her. "Mother..." Her voice cracks, and she has to clear her throat and straighten up. "How's your day been?"

Carol ignores the question. "Who was that?"

In her stomach, the final embers of today's happiness fizzle and burn out, leaving behind thick, ashy panic. "Oh, she's...I met her yesterday, I'd - lost my hat." _Ridiculous_. "Left it lying on a bench. And she found it."

Her mother's face pinches. "Why were you in that part of the ship at all, Piper?"

"I was just...taking a walk, Mother. Wanted to see the entire ship. I sought her today, to simply thank her again."

"You had to bring her to _our_ area for that?" She says it as though they own the ship.

"We just started talking. She was nice."

"Hmph." Her mother sniffs, then simply nods at Piper. "Come, darling, let's dress for dinner."

It's deceptively accepting, but Piper recognizes the look on her mother's face: this is simply a lecture she will be handing off to her husband.

She follows into step beside her mother, fear beginning to flutter in her chest. She is afraid at whatever paternal order is certainly coming to end her association with Alex, but even more frightening is Piper's bone deep certainty that she will be defying every word of it.

* * *

While Piper changes for dinner, there is plenty of opportunity for her mother to inform her father about finding their daughter with a third class woman who dresses in slacks, and yet Bill betrays nothing in his behavior toward Piper all evening.

The first glimmer of concern doesn't come until after the meal, when Larry forgoes the Smoking Room gathering of men and instead accompanies Piper back to their suites, suggesting a glass of wine on the private promenade.

It passes in even keeled pleasantry for the first ten minutes, as Larry describes to her the tour of the ship he took with the builder, Mr. Andrews, rattling off facts about Titanic, including the surprisingly low number of lifeboats considering the number of passengers. Piper is almost lulled into a state of relaxation when Larry, two seconds after finishing the last drop in his glass as though he'd set that moment as a starting point, says to her, "So I hear you were socializing with someone from steerage."

Piper regards him with irritation. "You know I can't stand you and Father talking about me when I'm not there."

He ignores that. "Your mother was in quite a state, apparently. She told him the woman wasn't just third class, but 'dressed like a man' and 'overly familiar'. Her words, not mine."

"Have you really become such a snob so quickly?"

"Of course not. This isn't an unreasonable concern. It's perfectly nice that you made a friend, Piper, but you _do_ have to think of how it looks. Your father thinks - "

"Honestly, I'm so sick of that phrase coming out of your mouth," Piper snaps, suddenly feeling like she can't tolerate him for another moment. "Tell me, do you possess a single opinion you didn't hear first from one of our fathers?"

Larry's reflection opens and closes his mouth several times, like a particularly moronic fish. Then, all at once, his expression hardens and cools. "If you remember, I differed from both of them as to whether you should attend university."

The temperature of Piper's own voice drops, too. "And you put up _such_ a good fight, obviously," she grits out, dripping sarcasm and something bordering on dislike. "How long will you be insisting I award you points for something that did me no good?"

"I just think it's worth mentioning I was on your side. Especially when you pretend such a thing is impossible."

"Well, be on my side now," she says, her voice moving, with great effort, from accusation into plea. "Larry, please. Honestly, you of all people know how bored I get with these women, all trapped in the champagne bubble of their social lives. Alex is interesting. She talks to me about books, and she's a very talented artist - "

Larry laughs at her, sudden and loud. "Ooooh, well that explains it, then. An _artiste_. I understand you now." He smiles at her, kind once again but maddeningly condescending. "You always do this, Piper. Revere artists and writers, as though there's no higher achievement."

All attempts at a conciliatory tone vanishes from her face, and Piper gives Larry a withering glance, feeling sick to death of him in a way she rarely does. "You used to write stories when we were in school. They weren't bad, either, though you seem to have forgotten."

He stands up and pulls his chair to her side of the table, resting his hands on her knees in what's evidently meant to be a conciliatory gesture. "I haven't said it's not a perfectly fine hobby. But the contribution to society is trivial...not a necessity. It's entertainment, which is great! It's only your insistence on the genius I take issue with."

Piper raises one eyebrow, trying to affect something close to the expression she'd noticed Alex using for particularly pointed sarcasm. "And what, precisely, have _you_ contributed to society?"

He lets out a bark of laughter. "You honestly don't think that _railroads_ -"

"Oh, I understand the impact of railroads. But you didn't invent them. Or build them. Or make decisions about building them. I'm asking what you, personally, have done other than being born with the right last name?"

He physically reels away from her, looking like she's slapped him. A thrill of something almost like power rolls up Piper's spine, and she takes a quick, brave breath before standing up and looking down at him. "Tell my father if he'd like to speak to me he should do it himself, Larry. I don't care for you much as a puppet."


	3. Chapter 3

**Friday, April 12, 1912**

* * *

"Did you speak to Piper?"

Larry Bloom's future father-in-law is waiting for him in his suite's sitting room and doesn't even bother with a proper greeting. Larry recovers quickly from his unexpected presence and nods. "Of course. Just after dinner."

Bill raises an expectant eyebrow, waiting for more. "And are things taken care of?"

"I don't know," Larry tells him, knowing this answer won't going to be well received. "I think it might be better coming from you."

Bill tightens his jaw and stands up from the armchair to approach Larry, giving him the disapproving look he hates; the older man has maybe an inch on him in height, but always somehow gives the impression that he's much taller than he is. "Tell me. How do you expect to be a suitable husband for my daughter if you cannot even curtail her more destructive whims?"

"I don't think, in this instance, it was a matter of her not listening to me," Larry rushes to explain. "She knew right away it was really your objection. And - sorry, sir - she likely assumes I wouldn't disapprove so strongly of my own volition."

"Well, then, I think you've stumbled upon your problem," he retorts, unmoved by the excuses.

Larry forces himself to hold Bill's gaze, face heating up again as he remembers Piper's scorn when she'd called him a puppet. "I still think it's rather harmless."

"Your future wife associating herself with some _bohemian_ _commoner_ is harmless?"

"We both know how Piper is, sir. Drawn to anything that seems novel or unique...this is just like one of her books. It's a temporary indulgence, and in the few days we're on the ship will it really hurt?"

There is a muscle pulsing dangerously in Bill's jaw, but other than that he remains entirely composed. "Son. We are approaching a time - very soon, in fact - when Piper will become your responsibility."

Bill's voice is slow and deliberate; he often gives the impression he'd memorized his remarks in advance, made sure to rehearse the perfect delivery, and it effectively keeps Larry silent. He isn't addressing the question, the _why_ of it being such a disgrace for Piper to collect a few stories from a third class woman, but Larry doesn't dare push it.

"This means," Bill continues. "That her behavior will now reflect on you as much as it does on her mother and I. Perhaps even moreso. So think beyond this moment, when you are married and back among your friends' society. And how it will reflect on you when your future wife so easily dismisses what you say. When she conducts herself in a way that clearly does not reflect your wishes." He lets that sink in, the point irrefutable the way he presents it. "Best to set a precedent, don't you think?'

* * *

"It was a tramp steamer that first got me to France," Alex is telling Piper. "It's steady work, and there are regular meals, which is nice...but I got bored fast. I'm not good with routine."

"How did you manage to get hired for something like that?" Piper asks, sitting beside Alex on the bench, asking questions while she draws. Alex keeps looking up to check Piper's face, make sure she isn't bored, and every time finds her eyes still shining with eager wonder. "Isn't it usually all men?"

"Yeah, which was another thing I disliked about it." Alex flashes her a quick grin. "But I kind of...cut my hair off. And got some really loose shirts." Piper lets out a surprised, breathy laugh. "Didn't even have to change my name."

She'd been eighteen at the time, and tired of more than California and the thinning crowd at the Santa Monica pier. A whole country had no longer seemed like enough; Alex needed an ocean between herself and her mother's death.

Piper's tilting her head and studying Alex, pursed lips and squinting eyes.

"What are you looking at?"

"I just can't imagine anyone believing you were a man."

"Why's that?"

Piper flushes instead of answering, and Alex bends over her sketchbook again to hide a smile.

"So what will you do when the ship docks back in America?"

"Haven't thought much about it yet," Alex tells her honestly. "Maybe stay in New York for awhile, since we've got awhile until winter...could probably do some portrait work on Coney Island. Or go back to Massachusetts, just to see my hometown again. I don't know. I'll decide when we get there."

"Three days ago you had no idea you'd be moving to an entirely different continent," Piper marvels. "I envy that. There's not a single thing about the rest of my life that isn't planned out and certain." She sighs, a note of genuine bitterness creeping into the words. "If your life is a free fall, mine is an endless staircase."

Alex's fingers go still and she looks up at Piper with a small smile, wanting to cheer her up. "Hey, that's pretty good. You should be a writer."

Something strange sweeps over Piper's face, as though Alex has just said something momentous.

"What?"

"Nothing," she says fast, like it's her instinct to dismiss her own thoughts. But, barely two seconds later, Piper changes her mind and explains anyway. "It's just funny. When I was a little girl, I wanted to write books when I grew up." She says it with a little laugh, ringing with a lifetime of brash dismissals, to indicate the silliness.

"Do it," Alex says simply. "You don't need university for that. Or a penis."

Piper gives a shout of a laugh, scandalized. "Alex!"

"Well, it's true," she says, smirking.

"I could write a character based on _you._ " Piper's eyes are dancing. "Your life's definitely been exciting enough."

"Oh, I see now. You've been probing me for stories as _research_." Alex tips her head back, mock lamenting, "You'll probably make an additional fortune selling a novel about my poverty fueled adventures, while I stay completely destitute."

"Not _completely_ ," Piper counters, her voice sunshine warm, floating on laughter. "I'll commission you to do an illustration for the cover."

"A self-portrait? Interesting. You've got a deal."

"This means you'd better keep talking. I'll need to know _everything_."

"Hey, you're the writer," Alex says, liking the way Piper's smile brightens a few notches at the statement. "Ask me whatever you want to know."

For some reason, Piper's smile fades slightly, her countenance growing slowly serious. "Is it ever lonely? Living like that?"

It is the first time Piper has expressed anything other than envy or fascination with Alex's life, and it's vaguely unsettling. She indicates her sketching pad, stuffed with other people. "I tend to seek out spaces full of people. I'm rarely alone."

"Right, but I mean...those aren't usually people you care about. Or even know very well." Piper frowns a little, seeming to catch herself prying. "Or perhaps some of them are. I only mean...well, who's the person you love best in the world?"

The answer comes easily. "For fifteen years it was my mother." Alex wonders how much time will have to pass before she ceases to feel as though her heart must be dragged from her chest and up her throat just to say the word. "Since then, it's been less consistent. A month ago, it was the woman who let me stay in her flat in London for two weeks. Last week, it was a little boy I shared food with in the park. Two days ago, the man who invited me into a poker game with his friends." She smiles winningly at Piper. "And right now I guess it's you."

The words come out sounding too honest; Alex can taste the inadvertent truth of them, lingering on her lips. Too fast, too nervous, she adds, "Next week, it will be someone else."

 _But maybe it won't_ , Alex finds herself thinking. It's the sort of the thought that suggests this is becoming too dangerous.

"But you're right," Alex says suddenly, almost as if she needs to remind herself. "About it being a very lonely way to live, without attachments. Though...sometimes that's sort of the point."

Obvious confusion sweeps Piper's expression, but she doesn't ask Alex to explain. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked that. Believe me, you can feel entirely alone even with... _very_ permanent attachments."

Alex looks at her, her voice going soft. "I bet."

* * *

Before Piper leaves her for the evening, she touches the long closed sketching pad in Alex's lap and asks, "I was wondering...if I could have that sketch you did? Of me?"

Alex shoots her an amused smile. "I thought you hated that."

"I didn't _hate_ it," she protests, rolling her eyes like a bratty child. "I just found it presumptuous."

Alex quickly finds the page and hands it over. "Fine, fine. You can rip it to shreds or toss it in the ocean, or whatever disposal method you prefer. But you can't stop me from drawing another one." Alex props a cigarette between her teeth and grins around it. "If you're writing a book about me it's only fair."

"True," Piper agrees in a lofty voice. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Sure. Although..." Alex hesitates for only a second. "If you can get away after dinner, there's something I'd like to show you."

To Alex's delight, Piper's eyes light up at the suggestion. "I think I can do that."

"Meet me at our bench?" The _our_ just slips out and, God help her, Alex likes the way it sounds.

She might be imagining it, but it seems like Piper's smile brightens. "Yes. As soon as I can."

Alex retreats to her cubicle room and right away sets to work on a new portrait of Piper. For the first time, she feels like what she has isn't enough: she needs colors, wants to draw the way Piper's eyes remind her of the ocean. Not the bright, crystal blue of too many landscapes, but dark and murky: the sea bottomless and enigmatic.

* * *

Daniel Cameron, her father's personal valet and - Piper suspects - quasi-bodyguard due to his more underhanded business dealings and debts, is waiting for her outside the Millionaire Suites. "Master Bloom would like you to join him in his suite for a moment before dinner."

Still heading for her own door, Piper says, "Tell him I'll find him after I dress, if there's time - "

Cameron grabs her arm, calm but firm. "Now, Miss Chapman."

She sighs but obeys, heading inside to find Larry waiting in the sitting room, displeasure already radiating from him. "Where have you been all day?"

Piper groans lightly, cutting through the pretense. "It seems as though you already know. Did you have the manservant follow me or was that Father?"

Larry's face hardens, and he snaps, "I thought I made myself clear last night, Piper."

"You did. But I don't recall giving the impression that I agreed with or cared about your objections."

"You will _not_ speak to me that way," Larry yells, standing up as he does, and Piper starts slightly at the sudden volume and movement. Larry isn't usually quick to anger.

"What is _wrong_ with you?"

"What is wrong with _you_?" He counters, sounding like a petulant little boy, his face red as though sustaining anger is exerting. "How do you have so little respect for me? It won't do, Piper. What are people going to think when we're married, if my wife has so little regard for my opinions or requests."

He sounds so stupid and blustering in that moment that, even looking right at him, Piper can barely believe there was anything fond or affectionate between them, even as children. "Well, I suppose they'll think, _oh_ , _how typical for him_. You are _barely_ your own man, Larry; you defer to your father, to mine, to our mothers, even...it's only when _I_ dare to disagree with you that you see a problem."

He stares at her, stunned. It takes a moment to recover his anger. "You're no picnic yourself, Piper," he spats. "Do you even realize that? That perhaps you're not the only one thinking you could do better?" His eyes narrow into slits, voice dripping poison. "Better than a cold, ungrateful wife who will always secretly believe she's better than me. _Imagine that._ "

Piper blinks at him, primarily shocked that Larry would say anything so out of turn. So _honest_. He seems startled himself, already avoiding her eyes.

On a whim, apropos to nothing, Piper extends the drawing in her hand. "What do you think of this?"

His face twisting with understandable confusion, Larry nevertheless takes it. "It's, ah. It's quite good," he pronounces finally, a bit grudging but also seemingly relieved at finding his way back to politeness. "Looks just like you." He says it like a question, uncertain what she's getting at.

"Yes, but... _how_ do I look in it?"

"Normal?" He shakes his head, impatient now. "As you always do? Honestly, Piper, I don't care how good of an artist this friend of yours is, it's rather beside the point - "

"I know it is," Piper interrupts, taking Alex's sketch back. "Your point is clear to me now. Thank you."

She isn't really saying anything, but Larry recognizes the tone of acquiescence, even a false one. He nods, unmistakably relieved, and she leaves him to dress for dinner; later, she tucks her hand into his elbow and smiles as she walks at his side, lets him order for her, notes his subtle nod to her father's approving stare.

All the while, she is plotting escape.

* * *

Piper feels strangely awake throughout dinner, turning off her usual instinct to tune out the chatter around her and instead listening with amusement to the shallow, dimwitted comments, already shaping them into humorous anecdotes for later tonight. Piper thinks perhaps the reason she's been bored her whole life is because she didn't have Alex yet to tell things to.

Larry is clearly convinced all is well between them, so he leaves with her father and the other men, and Piper is unapologetic in departing immediately from the women, finding Alex on their bench with a cigarette between her lips. She smiles when she sees Piper. "Hey, glad you made it."

"Me, too," she says fervently. In a rush of reckless comfort, she plucks the cigarette away from Alex and takes her own drag.

Alex's eyes flare with amusement. "Wow, you're in the perfect mood for where we're going."

Feeling cocky, Piper blows a tunnel of smoke right in Alex's face. "And where's that?"

"To do a bit of wild partying."

* * *

The third class general room is a smoky haze of raucous activity, steerage passengers of all ages dancing and eating and drinking. A mismatch of musicians are gathered near an upright piano in one corner, honking out lively, loud stomping music on a fiddle, accordion, tambourine, and several different drums. Men yell curses and arm wrestle at a table only a few feet away from a twirling group of children.

It's a lot to take in, loud and tight knit, and Piper freezes up for a second, vividly aware of how out of place she must look, has already caught a few hungry sneers cast in her direction. But then Alex reaches back and wraps her fingers around Piper's hand, giving a gentle tug. "'S okay. I promise." She smiles, confident and convincing, but her eyes are searching Piper's, patiently waiting for her to agree.

After only a moment, Piper nods. "One thing, though." Pulling her hand away from Alex's, Piper pulls off the white gloves she had on for dinner and tosses them carelessly aside. Her fingers find Alex's again warm and, somehow, already, familiar. They smile at each other, and then Alex turns and leads her easily through the crowd.

"Vause!" Her last name comes in a chorus of male voices, packed around a small table with a pack of cards and a smattering of small coins. A young Irish guy with a cigarette in his mouth waggles his eyebrows at her. "Whose livelihood ya stealin' tonight, lass?"

Alex smirks at him without teeth. "Whoever's brave enough." She looks back at Piper, explaining, "I impressed them with the story of how I won my ticket...they seem to like a challenge. Poor things."

There are guffaws and calls of protest at that, and Alex just grins, then leans over the men to pick up two full pints of stout. "For us?" Without waiting for an answer she turns to hand one to Piper, affecting a snotty accent. "Your champagne, mademoiselle."

The frantic, pounding music has Piper's blood pumping and, feeling bold, she tips the glass back and chugs nearly half of it without stopping.

She's gratified to find Alex still watching her, wide eyed and taken aback. Piper throws her a haughty smile. "What? Thought a first class girl couldn't handle her drink?"

Alex laughs and clinks her own glass against Piper's. "I stand corrected." She takes a generous pull from the beer and then nods at a crowd of people between the band and makeshift dance floor. "C'mon."

Glancing back at the table of poker players, Piper says, "You aren't going to play?"

Alex raises her voice loud enough for the men to hear her. "I'll let them enjoy their night for a little longer, go back later when they're feeling cocky." They shout more abuse after her, and Piper giggles a little and follows Alex, sticking close enough to hold her hand, though they aren't anymore. In a funny, sudden instinct, Piper almost grabs for it.

Piper leans against one of the poles scattered throughout the room and Alex stands just behind her, and they watch the energetic, ad hoc band, pounding out a mad rush of music, and a cluster of couples locked at the elbow, nearly galloping in tight, coordinated circles. Piper smiles, she can't help it, the air itself is swirling with exhilaration, and she claps her hands in the quick, steady rhythm of the song. Every time she looks back, to see if Alex is smiling, too, she's grinning right at Piper, watching her with utter delight and unmistakable fondness.

"Your balls and cotillions anything like this?" Alex teases at some point, her voice low and warm and right against Piper's ear.

She shakes her head in staunch denial, then twists around to look at Alex. "Do you not dance?"

"Not usually," she says, then smiles. "You go right ahead, though."

"I'm good here," Piper says, pulling on Alex's sleeves with a grin, guiding her arms into place until she, too, is clapping along with the beat.

But then the song changes, to something a little wilder and more urgent, and as if it's a cue a chain begins to form, each person holding hands with someone else on either side of them, jumping and weaving through the room, pulling people in from the outskirts of the dance floor. A man who seems to know Alex catches her eye and in a flash of motion, she grips Piper's hand and allows both of them to be pulled into the weaving line.

It's fast and awkward and Piper slows too much on a weaving turn to kick off her high heeled shoes; Alex keeps a secure hold of her hand and it's worth the stumble, as she bounces giddily in her stocking feet, her other hand claimed by another woman who tugs her dancing partner after her.

Piper can feel her hair coming loose, falling in tendrils around her face, and when she looks beside her Alex's glasses have slipped down the bridge of her nose, she keeps tilting her head back to keep them on. They catch each other's gaze at the same moment and burst out laughing. The music is vibrating in her bones, and Piper feels dizzy with the force of her own happiness; Piper feels so very _alive_.

* * *

Alex and Piper are practically skipping when they emerge on the ship's deck once again, Alex nearly doubled at the waist from laughter as Piper belts out an attempt at an Irish ballad she'd just learned from one of the men Alex trounced in poker. She fumbles the words and breaks into a string of giggles herself.

They pass the First Class Entrance but to Alex's relief, Piper doesn't even glance toward it.

She smiles at Alex, pink cheeked and beaming. Half her hair has come down, falling past her shoulders: golden curls that seem twined with sunshine, even now under moonlight and the star drunk sky. "I like the dance they were doing, this one..." She starts prancing across the deck in a tight circle, arms held aloft on an imaginary partner; her stockings slide on the wood of the deck and Alex has to grab her waist to keep her steady.

"You're drunk," Alex informs her with a grin.

"You're mean," Piper shoots back, but her eyes are sparkling. "You know exactly which one I'm talking about, c'mere..." She pulls Alex to her, clumsily moving them through the basic steps of the dance. " _That_ one."

"I know." They stop dancing, but don't let go. "What about it?"

"I liked it."

Alex laughs. "Good to know."

They look at each other. It's the longest Alex has touched her; it makes her skin feel as though it's burning on the inside.

Slowly, Piper drops her hand but doesn't step back. The mirth drains from her eyes, replaced with a sort of fierce conviction, and without introduction she says, "I'm not going to marry him."

Alex waits, but Piper seems to want a response, so, uselessly, she says, "Really?"

"Yes. I realized tonight...Larry doesn't love me, either. He says I'm cold, and I always thought that was true...that I'm incapable of feeling the way other people do, but I _can_." She smiles, just for Alex, as though she's proving it. "The only difference between Larry and I is that he's satisfied. I'm not."

"Good for you," Alex tells her softly, meaning it.

"Thank you," Piper says, rough with emotion. She lets it dangle between them for a moment, lets it be all encompassing, before she adds, "Tonight was amazing. I've never had such fun. I'm..." She pauses, swaying forward just the slightest bit, so close Alex's eyes almost hurt trying to look at her. So close that she feels like one breath will pull Piper's lips into hers. "I'm really glad I met you."

"Me, too," Alex exhales, weightless.

The moment hovers between them, long enough that Alex almost forgets not to hope, and finally Piper tips her face away, flushing. "I should get back." She takes a deliberate step back, then looks at Alex again. "I'm going to talk to my father tomorrow."

Nodding, managing a smile, Alex says, "Good luck."

"I'll see you after?"

"Sure. Come find me."

"I will. Goodnight, Alex."

"Goodnight, Piper. Night."

* * *

 **Saturday, April 13, 1912**

* * *

She has breakfast with her parents on the private promenade, relieved Larry doesn't join them.

Her parents are largely silent, but that's nothing out of the ordinary, until her father says, without looking at her, "How was your night, Piper?"

Anxiety flutters in her chest, and she was already nervous about this talk. Piper looks at her father, trying to read him, but Bill's face gives away nothing. "It was fine," she says at last.

"Your excursions below deck warrant nothing but _fine_?"

"I - " Piper stops speaking as soon as she starts, unsure of what to do. Her father's voice is still entirely mild, but there's a quiet danger crackling in the air. "It was just a bit of silliness. A lark, really."

"I thought Larry had spoken to you about this particular _lark_."

At that, Piper lifts her chin and forces herself to meet his eyes, seeing an opening. "I was actually hoping to speak to you about Larry."

The temperature of Bill's voice drops a few barely perceptible degrees. "What about him?"

Already, Piper feels her bravery cowering, and it's with flustered weakness that she finally manages to ask, "It's...the business deal you've made with his father. The two of you have known each other for so long, it's surely not entirely dependent on the wedding, is it?"

Beside Piper, her mother jerks around to stare at her daughter, stricken, but Bill's expression doesn't waver. In a terse but calm voice he says, "Leave us please."

The few servants standing nearby quickly turn and leave the promenade. Bill then tips his head toward his wife, eyes still on Piper. "Carol, dear, you, too."

Her mother seems horrified, but she doesn't protest, just levels a cold stare at Piper before she stands and leaves as well.

When they're alone, Bill steeples his fingers together and stares at Piper over his hands. "Tell me," he says in a conversational tone. "When is the wedding Piper?

She feels tightly wound, and the words come out strained. "In just over a week. I know. But, Father - "

"And you realize this means invitations have gone out. An announcement has been run. Food has been ordered."

"Yes, and - "

He raises his voice just enough to effectively smother her answer. "So if you cancel the wedding - if you humiliate that boy - you think Lawrence will feel favorable toward our family? That he will not question my honor if you so easily discard yours? Are you comfortable giving up the guaranteed safety net of his fortune, of our _connection_ to it?"

For just a second, Piper hates him.

"How can you do this?" she demands, voice wild. "You are putting your mistakes on my shoulders, Father, and it's not fair - "

" _Fair_?!" The word seems to break some string of calm inside him, and Bill stands up and sweeps the breakfast china onto the floor, towering over his daughter in explosive rage. "You stupid, ungrateful girl. Your entire life, you have wanted for nothing, it has all been handed to you. _N_ _othing_ has been required of you, until now, when there is finally a call for your contribution...a contribution that is simply marry a well bred man as has been your desire your entire life."

His face twists in disgust, and he finally turns away from her, pacing in angry strides. Piper presses a hand over her mouth, doing everything she can not to cry. She's trembling, shocked by the very real fear pulsing through her.

"Amazing," Bill scoffs. "Three days spending time with this girl, this gutter rat, and you have it in your head you would prefer to starve on the streets in men's clothing like the common filth - yes, Piper, I know exactly how that mind of yours works. And it stops now. I forbid you to see her. You will not set foot in steerage again, are we clear?"

He looks at her again, waiting, and Piper digs her teeth into her lip to suppress a whimper, feeling small and cornered. Petrified, she nods.

Alex had tricked her into believing the things she says matters, and she'd almost forgotten how easily her father bats them away. How easily he always wins.


	4. Chapter 4

**Saturday, April 13, 1912**

* * *

Alex takes her sketch pad, her cigarettes, and an apple from the third class dining saloon and goes to her and Piper's bench in the morning, still carrying her good mood from last night.

She's drawing Piper again, wanting to tease her with a portrait she'll like better than the sad one. Alex wants to draw the way she'd looked last night, disheveled and shining; it's an image stuck in her head, she can draw more if she needs, but this one she'll give to Piper. Even if Alex never sees her after the ship docks, she wants Piper to have tangible proof of her own happiness.

And, maybe, proof of Alex, too.

That's something she keeps thinking about: when the ship docks, and what might happen after. If she'll ever see Piper again.

For the past five years, Alex has been unable to see anything further than the next few hours. She lives with no guarantees, no predictions, even, and she's always liked it that way. Every day is a fresh hand of cards, no rhyme or reason to the dealing. Alex is a good player, she's _so_ good; whatever she gets, she makes it work for her. But now -

Well. Now she's wishing for just a little hint.

Morning rolls lazily away with no sign of Piper, but Alex doesn't allow herself to worry about it. She can only imagine a fuzzy impression of Piper's family dynamics, or what sort of endless discussions might follow the revelation Piper planned to make to her father this morning.

So, patiently, Alex waits.

She stretches across the bench and falls asleep in the sun for a few hours after lunchtime. She doesn't know what time it is when she wakes up, has to ask three passing people before one has a pocket watch. Nearly dinner time.

Nearly time to worry.

* * *

Piper spends the day fitting herself back inside the cage of her life, and remembering all the reasons she is ill equipped to live outside it. Alex makes it sound appealing - _Alex makes everything sound beautiful_ _-_ but it is easy to disguise reality when they're both confined to this ship.

Alex sleeps outside and steals food and chops off her hair to get work on a boat. Alex has survived five years of that life, but Piper would crumble in a single day. Her father is right; everything has been handed to her. She has never had to do anything for herself, or at all; she's no better than the accusation she threw at Larry, just someone born with a good name everything that came along with it. She has no idea how to live without it, but she would have to, that much is certain: her only choices are the extremes. There is no walking away from her wedding to Larry without walking away from _everything_ : home, family, life.

Her father doesn't allow her to be alone all day, making sure if he's not with her, Larry is. For his part, Larry is overly solicitous and cheerful, obviously hoping to move beyond yesterday's unpleasantness. If he's been filled in on her trip below deck last night, he doesn't let on.

Only for a few hours in the morning is Piper tightroping along the edge of tears; that's how long it takes her to convince herself she's being foolish. Three days ago she was perfectly fine. Not ecstatic, sure, but not miserable either. She'd known her future, and not once had considered refusing it.

And Alex is just a stranger spinning stories; Piper got caught up in a fantasy the same way she loses herself in books and paintings. But it's not real life; not for her.

Still -

She keeps telling herself that within a week or two, she will likely have trouble picturing Alex's face, recalling what they'd talked about for so many hours. But right now, Piper feels vaguely ill every time she thinks of Alex waiting futilely at the bench for her, all day long.

Her only chance comes when they dress for dinner. Her mother accompanies Piper to her bedroom, stands behind her, tying her into her corset in front of the vanity mirror. Carol hasn't said a direct word to her daughter all day, but after five minutes of knotting and looping strings, she says quietly, "It will be a beautiful wedding."

Piper averts her eyes from her own reflection as she murmurs, "I know, Mother."

"And he will treat you well." The corset squeezes her ribcage tighter. "It is a good life you're getting, Piper."

Her voice is not a gentle reassurance, but a reproach and reminder that Piper should not complain.

"Yes, ma'am."

Her mother leaves her, then, to dress in her own room, and it occurs to Piper all at once that if she's going to go, she has to go now.

She half expects to find her father in the sitting room, guarding her door, but it's empty even of servants and so Piper slips easily out of the suite, holding the skirt of her dress in bunched fists and going as fast as her heels allow. She tells herself she is only going to be polite, but halfway to the steerage deck she thinks of a better reason: she's making sure Alex knows not to come looking for her.

There is every chance Alex has given up on her by now, is inside eating dinner or drawing in artificial light or playing poker with the Irishmen; if she's not at the bench, Piper can at least assure herself that she tried.

But Alex is there, the only one still out on the deck. Her hair is a windswept mess, eyes restless, an unlit cigarette in her mouth. She sits up when she sees Piper, but her smile is small, worry eclipsing the instinctive flash of relief in her eyes.

As though that quickly, somehow, she can see through Piper.

"Hey."

"Hello." Piper stays standing, her hands folded behind her back, distant and formal. Slowly, Alex stands, too, so she can comfortably meet Piper's eyes. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I...I only have a moment, I have to get to dinner soon."

"Oh." Alex squints at her, uncertain. She's taken the cigarette from between her teeth and is rolling it nervously between her fingers. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine," Piper says firmly. "I just came to tell you that I've enjoyed talking to you the last few days. But it's not a good idea for me to keep spending time here."

"What happened?" Alex demands, without even a breath of pause after Piper's declaration. "Piper, what did they say to you?"

"Nothing untrue. I was being foolish, and I let myself get caught up in your stories, indulge in fantasies - "

"Horse shit," Alex spits out, her jaw tight, and Piper takes an unconscious step back, uneasy. It's the first time she's head Alex angry. "Piper, you told me you didn't want to marry your fiance. You said you didn't think you were capable of _feeling_ before now. That's not a goddamn fantasy, and it's not something you should just ignore - "

Defenses prickling, Piper retorts, "Only because _you_ started me talking that nonsense! Asking incessant questions about my life...before I met you, I was perfectly content, and planning a wedding - "

"No, before you met me you were collapsing on a ship deck because you couldn't breathe," Alex says bluntly. "Piper, it's _me_ , at least tell me the truth here. What did your father - "

"It's not just him," Piper insists; to tell the truth would be admitting the full extent of her own cowardice. "I changed my mind, I want this - "

"Fine, if it's your choice, then why cut me off?" Alex challenges, taking a few steps closer so she's standing right in front of Piper, eyes wide and blazing. "What difference does it make?"

Piper's throat feels tight, and it takes her a moment to find an answer. "You confuse me," she finally forces out, soft. It's maybe the first honest thing she's said.

"Why? Because I don't talk to you like you're an incapable idiot, yes, I'm sure that _is_ a completely new experience - "

" _Stop_ _,"_ Piper exhales, more plea than command.

The fire cools in Alex's eyes, and for a moment they search Piper's face in the way that's quickly become familiar. "Piper," her voice softens into a hush. "Tell me."

"I'm not like you, Alex," she finally manages, voice thick. "I can't do it. My father will force me to marry him unless I cut all ties and run away and I'd...I'd have nothing. I'd be alone. "

"You wouldn't have to be," Alex says in a sudden rush, a sort of wild light flaring in her eyes. "Piper, I could help you. It could be just like we said, you know, I could show you California, you could write and I'd draw - "

Piper's eyes flit away, shielding from the intensity of Alex's gaze, how much she means this.

Alex's voice slows to a stop, and she reaches out to touch Piper's cheek, her fingers cool, making Piper look at her. She's so close. When she starts to speak, Piper can feel the breath of the words. "If you wanted...you wouldn't be alone."

Piper closes her eyes, seduced by the hope pulsing in the words. Without meaning to, she tips forward, her forehead falling against Alex's, hands grabbing for something to steady her and ending up with fistfuls of her shirt.

A sound rips free of Piper's throat, the sound of something cracking open, and it lets in a riptide of _fear_ and _wanting_ strong enough to drown her.

Alex is holding her face with both hands, so gentle, so close, and Piper's heart starts racing. She thinks of the naked women in Alex's sketchpad, of Alex saying she'll never get married, of the moment between them on the deck last night.

Piper wrenches away from Alex, letting out a frightened yelp of, " _No_." She feels sick. "This wasn't supposed to be..." She swallows. "There's something wrong with you."

She means to say _me_ , or maybe _us_ , but it comes out _you_. It comes out ugly.

Alex's face ignites, flickering flames of hurt and anger. "Fine," she says after a horrible silence, the word like a tiny, sharp stone. More follow. "Go. Marry him. And you try to tell yourself _I'm_ the one who's messed up."

Her gaze is unyielding, so Piper has to be the one to look away. She has to get back, they can't realize she was gone, so she takes heavy steps across the deck, back to the first class entrance, feeling as though Alex's glare is a physical weight on her back.

* * *

It's become her routine to return to her bunk late, usually finding the other men in a heavy sleep (Alex usually spots them in a corner of the general room after dinner, chugging lager with a fervor that explains their consistency), so Alex chain smokes on the deck - her poker games have kept her fully supplied in cigarettes - until she's tired enough to contemplate falling asleep on the bench instead.

Her eyes are wet when she closes them, and Alex is so, so angry at herself for that.

* * *

Piper goes to Larry's suite instead of her own, just in case her parents are in the sitting room by now.

When he smiles and says she looks great, trying hard like he always does, Piper smiles back. And she pretends not to notice when her father storms in and looks relieved to find she's just with her fiance. She smiles through dinner and she smiles afterwards, when her mother prompts her into describing the wedding's flowers and the nightmare that was the bridesmaids' dresses. She smiles when Larry and her father return from the Smoking Room, and she smiles when Larry asks her to have champagne on the promenade. She smiles when he says that maybe they could revisit university after the wedding, even though she knows it's an olive branch that will never come to fruition. She smiles after she kisses him goodnight, so long and deep that Larry's daze eyed when it's over.

She smiles and smiles and smiles and then she shuts the door to her bedroom and lets muffled sobs scrape her throat to shreds.

* * *

S **unday, April 14, 1912**

* * *

Alex wakes just after sunrise, her back sore and her mouth tasting like stale smoke.

She walks stiffly to G-Deck, taking advantage of the early hour to take a shower with no wait in the common bathrooms. She tilts her head back under the spray, it's the first truly hot shower she's had in ages, but she still feels half asleep.

Still mad, too, as though she'd drifted to sleep curled around anger, but it takes Alex some time to wake up enough to properly access it. She has always gotten by because she doesn't want more than she has: her own health, a few blank sheets of paper, and utter freedom. For the first time in years, she's made the mistake of wanting something else.

But the worst part isn't that it hurts; it's that last night, she hadn't been able to see through her own hurt to help Piper. She'd scared her away instead, made it all about her selfish wants.

She decides she has to fix it. It's Sunday, and that means Alex knows where the entirety of first class will be in a few hours.

* * *

There are always stewards just inside the first class entrance, but Alex easily hops the gate separating third from second class, apparently not as closely guarded. Divine services are being held throughout the ship, usually set up in the classes dining saloons, which is a blessing for what would have been a much more noticeable gambit: Alex drags a steamer chair to the wall below the A-Deck promenade, grabs hold of the lowest bars of the railing, and nimbly swings herself up and over.

There's a father playing with his son, spinning a top with a string, and Alex's eyes flick to a deck chair nearby, draped with an overcoat and hat. Without breaking stride, she walks by the chair and calmly grabs the clothing items. Still walking, she slips into the coat, then twists her hair into a knot, angling the hat so it holds the lump.

The first class dining saloon has been converted into a makeshift chapel, and Alex can hear a chorus of wealthy people singing hymns as she approaches. She's sure Piper is with her parents and fiance inside; she only intends to hover outside the entrance, out of sight but within distance to follow Piper when she leaves. From there, she'll figure out some manner of getting her alone.

There are several stewards stationed outside the entry doors, as well as a few gentlemen who seem to be servants of some sort. One is eyeing her suspiciously, so Alex turns her back, scanning the vicinity for a forgotten newspaper or something else to camouflage her intent.

A minute or so pass before a hand lands on her shoulder. Alex stiffens and turns, expecting to see the suspicious butler, but instead it's a man who must be his boss - the servant hovers behind him, seemingly for the sole purpose of menace.

"Do you know who I am?" The other man, the one standing directly in front of her, says, and Alex lifts her chin and says nothing even though she's beginning to guess. Eventually, he continues, "I understand you've become quite the object of fascination for my daughter."

She still doesn't answer, doesn't break eye contact. It's the only real power she has, to force him to get right to the point, not allow him to bait her.

"She's very...easily influenced, our Piper." Alex exhales sharply through her nose, chest turning hot with anger, her worst assumptions about the way Piper is regarded by her family confirmed. She swallows down a rising fight, certain she'd only get escorted straight out of the vicinity. "And you aren't an influence she needs."

Piper's father reaches into his pocket and extends a wad of bills toward her. "A little motivation," he says calmly. "So you're not tempted to seek her out again."

Alex clears her throat, dragging her eyes from the cash and back to him. "I don't want your goddamn money - "

He grabs her arm, rough and firm, pulling her forward in one brisk tug.

"Get your hands off me!" She's loud, raising her free arm to strike him, but the butler man steps forward, opening his coat to reveal the shiny butt of a revolver, at the same moment several stewards turns toward them. Alex knows they won't be swooping over to help _her_.

"Take it," Piper's father says calmly, as though she hadn't spoken, as though he isn't holding onto her, using his free hand to stuff the money into the pocket of her stolen coat. "Think of it as an undeserved _thank_ _you_ for simply remembering that you hold a third class ticket, and have no business with her. If you forget that again...well, the response will not be so generous."

He lets go of her and in the same motion turns to head back to the chapel, not giving her the chance to hurl the cash back in his despicable fucking face.

* * *

After church, Piper and her mother and a few of the other ladies are invited on the ship tour Larry and her father apparently took the second day on the ship. Thomas Andrews leads it, and Piper likes him; he's typically the least bombastic, and likely most intelligent, man at their dinner table.

Larry had told her about his own tour, so as they walk along the boat deck after seeing the chartroom, Piper falls into step beside Andrews and asks for confirmation about the lifeboats onboard only being enough for half the ship's passenger capacity, and Andrews nods, indicating where he put in a new type davits for an extra row of boats but was overruled on grounds of making the deck less cluttered, and Piper is further impressed: he's clearly a practical, intelligent man, not all about appearance like most people she knows.

As they pass the boats and Andrews is drawn into conversation with someone else, they walk past a gentleman standing against the rail, his back to them. Piper's passed by only a few feet before someone taps her on the arm. She turns to see the "gentleman" was Alex, her hair tucked into a hat and wearing a coat that can't possibly be hers.

Piper freezes, barely able to process her being there before Alex is moving away from the group, nodding her head for Piper to follow her. It's so unexpected that Piper can't do anything but obey.

They duck into the gymnasium, completely empty right now, but even so Piper speaks a fierce hiss, "Alex, I told you. I can't see you, and you _can't_ be here."

Even as she says it, Piper can't help searching Alex's face, embarrassingly relieved when she finds no leftover traces of fury there. But Alex is serious and determined, taking off her hat so her hair falls to a clump against her shoulder.

"I know. I know you told me, but I just need to say this. And then if you want, I'll leave you alone." She draws a breath, shaky, desperate, eyes roving Piper's like she's waiting for an argument. When Piper doesn't stop her, Alex says, "Do you know where I was before this ship? I was sleeping under a bridge, snagging food that was about to be thrown away."

Just like that, Piper is blanketed by shame, understanding exactly how Alex must see her: the dissatisfied society girl, crying over silver platters that have handed her everything she's ever needed.

But then Alex finishes, "And I still wouldn't want to trade places with you. Your life...it seems hard. You are _strong_ , Piper. You're stronger than I am, even, because I couldn't have survived for this long."

Not once, in her whole life, has Piper thought of herself as strong. Her throat narrows and her eyes fill up and when she says Alex's name it breaks in half.

" _That_ is what I should have said last night. I...I care about you, Piper," Alex looks up, then back again. "A lot. But that doesn't matter. This is about you, and your family. _I_ don't matter, leave me completely out of it..." Piper's eyes are squeezed shut, trying to keep back tears, but then Alex says gently, "Look at me."

She does. Alex lifts her hand, halfway to Piper, but seems to check the instinct and freezes there.

"You are smart. And you're strong, but they are making you _forget_ that. They make you think you're cold, and incapable, and unfeeling, but none of it's true. And you know that now." Her voice is rough. "I didn't do anything, I'm just the person you told it to. You deserve to be happy, and you _can_ be happy. It doesn't have anything to do with me."

Piper looks at her, seeing how much she means it. Alex's hand is still hovering between them; God, Piper wants her to touch her.

Alex drops her hand, fiddling with the hat. Finally, she gives a crisp nod. "That's all I wanted to say. Just...please remember that."

She's halfway to the door when Piper manages to make her voice work, "I think...perhaps it does, though."

Alex turns back, confused. "What?"

"I think it does have to do with you. Me being happy." The declaration is a delicate, tremulous thing. Alex's eyes are wide, searching. Still needing more.

Piper goes to her, her fingers latching onto the lapels of Alex's ridiculous coat, tugging her close, but she loses her nerve before the final few inches.

So Alex is brave instead, leaning forward, pulling Piper's lips into hers.

It is lovely and frantic, full of longing, as though even while they kiss Piper's pulse is beating out cries for _more more more_. Her hands come up to touch Alex's face, tangling in the wind blown mess of her hair.

Piper's heart, so quiet all her life, is _roaring_.

* * *

 _A/N: I think this is going to be a seven parter, not a four...not because I'm writing so much more than planned, but just going for shorter chapters and quicker updates. Should try to finish within the next week. Definitely let me know what you think!_


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Hey guys! Sorry for the wait on this one...it's the longest chapter yet, but also I was back home for the two and a half weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the weekends have been super busy with holiday stuff. You don't have to worry about me abandoning a fic after only two weeks of no updates. But the rest of this should be pretty quick...I travel back to see family tonight, and I usually get a lot done there, and quickly._

* * *

S **unday, April 14, 1912**

 **2:15 pm**

* * *

"I'm not usually down here during the day, so I don't know for certain, but I doubt the others spend much time in the room either."

"You share a room?" Piper asks, following Alex down a corridor in Titanic's G-Deck, so narrow they can barely walk side by side. Alex's fingers are laced with hers, firm and assuring; she'd suggested her bunk when Piper had pointed out they needed to get out of sight on the upper decks.

"Yeah, three Swedish guys."

"You share a room with _men_?"

"I won a man's ticket, remember? Speaking of - " She throws a grin over her shoulder at Piper, and with her free hand puts the hat back on. "- if you hear any stewards calling me _Sven_ , just nod along."

Piper laughs, nearly bumping into Alex when she stops moving to open a door, peering inside before swinging it all the way open. "All clear."

They go inside and Alex shuts the door behind them. Piper's momentarily surprised at the cramped space - this room for _four_ people? - but when she looks back at Alex she only smiles and states, pointlessly, "Bunk beds."

"Mmm-hmm. The finest craftsmanship."

"Which one's yours?"

Alex pats the top bed on the right side of the room. "Sit if you want."

Piper giggles like a little kid, pulling up the skirt of her dress as she carefully climbs up onto the bunk. With some difficulty, she stretches out on her stomach. Alex stands at the head of the bed, and she's tall enough that it puts them at eye level. They smile at each other, soft and maybe a little shy; Alex picks up one of Piper's hands, weaving their fingers together.

For maybe the first time, Piper isn't sure how to talk to Alex. She feels nervous, out of control and a little bit scared of herself; Alex had been the one to finally pull away, croaking out a hoarse reminder that they needed to go. Piper would have stood in the gymnasium kissing Alex for God knows how long - until someone had seen them like that.

"Where's all your stuff?" Piper asks finally, just wanting to say something.

"Right there." Alex nods to something behind Piper, and she twists around to see a rucksack wedged between the foot of the bed and the wall.

It occurs to Piper that the bag must contain everything Alex owns in the world. She turns back to her. "Do you keep old artwork in there?"

"Some, not much. It'd get crazy if I tried to keep everything."

Piper frowns a little, wants to ask what happens to the drawings - she doesn't like the idea of Alex's sketches simply thrown away, scattered or forgotten - but then Alex adds, "But I keep at least a few from every place I've been. Have more of my mom's though."

"Your mother was an artist, too?"

Alex's lips crook into a small, sad smile at that. "She'd have never put it like that, but yes, she could draw. She didn't have much time for it, though."

There's something about Alex's voice when she talks about her mother, the slightest fracture, that pinches something in Piper's chest. Spontaneously, she brings one of Alex's hands to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to her knuckles, and this time when Alex smiles it spreads to her eyes.

"What was she like?" Piper asks after a moment. "Your mother, I mean. You've never told me anything from when you lived in Massachusetts with her."

Shadows pass over Alex's face, and she's quiet for so long Piper hastily adds, "Never mind, I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask - "

"It's okay. I want to tell you." Alex squeezes her fingers, expression serious. "My mother worked for a long time as a seamstress. In shops, if she could get the work...sometimes she'd just go door to door, looking for work. But when I was twelve she got a job as a maid. She was so happy and proud, because it meant we'd have permanant lodging. We always had trouble keeping rooms. I was the reason she'd never been able to get a domestic position…they didn't want to bring a child into the house. But Mom had done sewing work for this family, and the wife liked her...they said I could help with washing and that kind of thing after school. They had four kids, most of them younger...but the oldest, Sarah, was two year older than me."

Piper wonders, for a moment, what it would have been like if Alex's mother had been hired in her own home, one of the many maids - if she and Alex had grown up under the same roof. But her own parents would never have employed an unmarried mother.

"Sarah didn't talk to me much - I think her parents told her not to. But when we'd been living there for about a year and a half, I was thirteen, and she saw me drawing one day, just sketching other girls from my school. She said they were good, and wanted to know if I would draw her.

"I already had. I draw everyone - well, you've seen. So I showed her, and she loved it. She was going on and on about how talented I was, how it was such a pretty drawing. I was really flattered, because you know...she was older, and had never spoken to me before. So I told her she was what made it pretty."

Piper lowers her eyes, just for a second, looking at Alex's hands between hers; she imagines those hands smaller, as child's hands, fiddling nervously with charcoal. Imagines Alex with a vulnerable smile and a worn dress.

"She didn't think it was a strange thing to say. She just thanked me, and said she hopes boys think she's pretty, too, someday. And she started telling me about a boy she liked from church...it was like we were friends.

"Sarah would come find me sometimes, after that - she liked posing for drawings, and she'd talk about boys while we did it. Somehow, one day, we were talking about kissing. She had never done it before, and was worried she didn't know how. So I said...she should practice. Said I'd even pretend to be the boy so she could." Alex flushes; it makes her look younger. "Stupid, right? But she agreed. It was like we were playing dress up. We took one of her brothers' coats and a hat, I tucked my hair into it. And so we kissed.

"I think she just... _liked it_. So we did it more. Sarah would always say we were just practicing, and she still talked about Tom all the time, but she didn't always want to wait for me to dress up.

"One day her father walked in on us." Piper's stomach clenches with real anxiety, as if this story didn't happen years and years ago. "I'd barely even see him up close, we always dealt with his wife. Anyway. We didn't see him come in, but he walked over and grabbed me by the back of my dress, jerked me away from her and threw me on the floor. It surprised me, mostly...I think I yelled, and then my mother ran in.

"Sarah's father just started yelling, telling her what we'd done, and Sarah was crying...but instead of just saying we were play acting or something, she starts yelling that I _made_ her, that I said I would hurt her if she didn't. It was crazy, she made me sound awful."

Alex's voice is pulled tight, aged hurt glittering in her eyes; it makes Piper's chest constrict, makes her want to change this story. Piper wishes she could tell Alex _she_ would have been different, would never have done that to her, but that would be a lie. Piper can imagine herself as a child, too - weak willed and selfish, terrified of her father.

Sarah sounds exactly like her.

"I tried to say it wasn't true, that it wasn't my idea, but the moment I started talking her father backhanded me across the face." Piper sucks in a sharp breath, involuntarily tightening her grip on Alex's hand. "My mom went crazy. She got in front of me and started pushed him away, yelling that if he touched me again she'd kill him. You could tell she meant it, too. He told us to get out of their house. And she just...took my hand and pulled me out of the room. We packed our stuff in maybe five minutes and just like that we were gone. She didn't have a job, or a place to live."

Alex grimaces, a muscle jumping her jaw, and Piper understands that this is what makes the memory painful, not the betrayal or violence - the fact that she ruined something for her mother. "I felt awful. It was my fault, and I didn't want her to think what Sarah said was true, or even that I'd been kissing her at all...I kept apologizing, trying to tell her we were just playing around, that it was a joke, or for practice. I was saying anything I could think of.

"But...she didn't even care. She stopped me from talking, and just said it didn't matter, that it wasn't my fault. She said she was glad we were out of that house, and then _she_ apologized to _me_ because he hit me. As though it was at all her fault.

"Things were hard for awhile, after that. I stopped schooling so I could work more and help out. But we were okay, we always managed. And then when I was fifteen she was working at a textile factory and didn't come home one day. A policeman finally showed up and said she'd collapsed at work and died. Hadn't even been sick.

"It...wrecked me. Entirely. She was my only family, and suddenly I had no one. And the thing is, Piper...I don't think I was very fair to you last night."

Piper blinks at Alex in confusion, startled by the abrupt change of subject. "What do you mean?"

"You told me that if you don't go through with the wedding, you essentially lose your entire family. And I never should have acted like that was a _small_ thing." Alex pauses, her eyes not leaving Piper's but _unstill_ somehow, as though she's searching for something. "Not wanting to give up everything doesn't make you weak."

There's a lump lodged in Piper's throat, first formed when Alex started talking about her mom dying with the slightest catch in her voice, now climbing insistently upward, threatening to shatter into a sob. "It's not _everything_ ," she whispers, voice thick and fierce. She winds her finger around a strand of Alex's hair, just wanting to touch her. Just because she can. "It sounds like your mother loved you very much...I don't think love even factors into with my parents."

"That's crazy," Alex says softly, one finger tracing gentle lines across Piper's palm. "Who couldn't love you?"

Piper's eyes fill up, and this time she's the one to lean forward and press a tentative kiss to Alex's lips. Alex touches two fingers to Piper's chin, deepening it, and Piper's chest spills over with so much love, so fast, it seems impossible.

"I have to go back soon," Piper says quietly when they finally pull away.

Disappointment cuts through the happiness on Alex's face, but she just nods, "I know."

"But...I won't give my father a chance to scare me again. I won't say anything to them. I'll play the part, let them think the wedding is going on. And then..." Piper takes a breath, scrambling around for all the strength Alex insists she has. "When the ship docks, I'm getting off with you."

Alex's smile floods her eyes with light, her laugh breathless and devastating. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Piper answers, and then she laughs, too, because she's never had much in her life to be this certain about. She is _so_ , so sure. Taking Alex's face in her hands, she says, "Tell me what it will be like."

So Alex grins and begins to speak, her voice low and lazy, telling Piper how they'll go to her hometown, every place she'll show her, and then make their way west, walk barefoot in the Pacific Ocean and ride the rollercoaster in Santa Monica.

She constructs them a future and presses it into Piper's hands.

Piper's lying with her cheek pressed to Alex's mattress, just listening. When Alex stops, she looks up at her and asks, hesitant, "And will we be..." She pauses, biting her lip, as though she's not sure of the word for it. "...together?"

Alex's smile is warm and teasing. "Well, I'm kind of hoping so. If it's what you want."

Piper nods, then adds, "But will that be...okay?" She makes an apologetic face. "Safe?"

Understanding softens Alex's features, and she nods. "It'll be fine. I promise." She arches an eyebrow, the corner of her lips quirking into a smirk. "And, hey, I can always cut my hair off again."

"But I like your hair," Piper murmurs, her fingers swimming through a tangle of it.

That makes Alex smile, and she leans over to kiss Piper on the cheek, sweet and fast. "Honestly, though. You're used to people watching everything you do, and being very aware of your life. For me...not so much attention."

"Okay. That's good."

They're quiet for awhile, then. With Alex right there, it's easier to think of all this as something real. Piper lowers her eyes, watching their woven together hands, the sparkling diamond of her engagement.

She'll hold onto it, as well as the other jewelry she has with her; they can sell it, somewhere in Massachusetts maybe. Piper only has a few dresses that will be appropriate, not attract attention outside of high society. She'll have to leave her paintings, but at least she brought several of her favorite books -

"What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing. Just...I'm making _plans_."

"How's it feel?"

"Feels good." She smiles. "I do wish I could show you my art collection before we go. No one else in my family has much appreciation for it."

Alex laughs. "Don't think we can swing by your family manor for a tour?"

"I actually have some here on the ship. I bought a lot in Europe."

"Oh yeah? What artists?"

"Do you know...I always forget the first name. Something Picasso."

"Pablo."

"Yes!" Piper smiles, pleased. "You know his work?"

"Of course."

So they talk about Piper's paintings for awhile until Alex is insisting on seeing them.

"No way we abandon a Degas and a Monet with your uncultured parents until I've at least had a look."

"They're probably looking for me at the moment," Piper says, anxiety twinging in her chest at the reminder. "But if I show up and play nice for awhile, it may be empty after dinner."

"Okay." Alex touches her cheek. "You'll come find me?"

"If I can. If not, it's because they upped the surveillance." She rolls her eyes, then smiles. "But only three more days."

"Three days..." Alex repeats, soft and awed. "You're sure?"

"So sure." Piper's lifts herself up, her mouth searching for Alex's, and it's a long time before they pull away.

* * *

Alex goes to their usual meeting spot on the bench when the sun begins to set, aware Piper could still be hours, aware it doesn't mean anything bad even if she doesn't show up. But she hates this, being apart from her for too long. It's not that Alex doesn't trust Piper's conviction, but she also remembers the look on Piper's father's face: gleaming eyes of a monster who knows its own power.

Except Piper does show up, and Alex's whole body relaxes when she sees her. She's almost achingly lovely in the most simple dress Alex has seen her in - short sleeves, pale lavender at the top, with a flowing white skirt. Her hair is entirely down, a mess of waves that falls past her shoulders.

Alex smiles like someone who isn't worrying at all. "You escaped."

Piper grins, adorably pleased with herself. "I did. Ready for an art tour?"

"You sure they aren't expected back?"

"Not so long as the cigars and brandy hold out."

"Wouldn't have figured your mother for a brandy gal."

That makes Piper laugh. "She's having wine with the other wives. It's all very predictable, which serves our purpose nicely."

Alex follows her up through the first class entrance, ostentatiously donning her hat again. Piper rolls her eyes and snatches it off Alex's head with a smirk. "You're with me, you don't have to do that. Though I'm impressed you have a disguise at the ready."

"I like to be prepared." Alex decides not to mention how she acquired the _disguise_.

When the get the corridors leading to first class suites, Piper shoots Alex an uncertain glance. "Let me check again? Make sure no one's there."

"'Course."

Alex leans against the wall of the corridor and watches Piper go on without her, opening one of the doors and peering in before turning back and gesturing for Alex to join her.

She steps inside a sitting room, huge, all gleaming mahogany and gilded trim. There's even a fireplace, and she can see several doors leading to other rooms. Alex lets out a low whistle; she's seen places like this, of course, Sarah's home was this breed of luxury, but wouldn't have imagined a temporary residence on a ship to require such opulence.

"Obscene, isn't it?" Piper says, a little sheepish. "For only seven days."

Alex starts wandering through doorways, circling through a parlor room, two bedrooms, and a marble bath suite. "They should charge people to live here. Even when the boat's docked."

"The paintings are in here," Piper calls from the sitting room; Alex smiles and makes her way back.

"Oh, wow..." she exhales, walking over to where Piper is standing next to a canvas leaning against the wall, looking as proud and anxious as though she'd done the painting herself. "You weren't kidding about the Monet. See the use of color here..." She crouches down and reaches toward the painting, indicating a cluster of lily pads reflecting in the water, her fingers barely an inch from the canvas but not daring to touch it.

"I know," Piper's voice comes from behind her. "Extraordinary, isn't he?"

"You know I saw him once." Alex looks back at her. "Through a hole in his garden fence in Giverny."

Laughing, Piper asks, "You were spying through his fence?"

"Of course. Wouldn't you if you had the chance?"

"I suppose I would."

She feels Piper's fingers twining absently with her hair; Alex loves that she seems to like doing that. Alex cranes her neck to look at Piper, reaching up and cupping her jaw, pulling her down for a kiss.

"Do you ever paint?" Piper murmurs when they're done, still close enough that Alex feels the words on her lips.

Alex shakes her head and her nose bumps Piper's. "Costs more...and harder to steal enough of."

Piper makes a disapproving face, but the curl of her lips against a smile gives her away. "I'll buy you some. Brushes and everything."

Standing up to face her, Alex raises an eyebrow. "Will you, now? Are you pulling off a heist of your father's money?"

"No." Piper smiles, smug. "As much as I wish we could bring the paintings with us, we can't. Too big to carry, right?"

Alex tilts a grin at her. "You're a natural."

" _But_. What I can bring is this." She holds out her left hand, and for the first time, the diamond there shines like an opportunity, not a burden. " _And..._ " Piper nods her head toward one of the bedrooms, and Alex follows her inside to a vanity, spread with several velvet jewel cases, gold and stones glittering inside them.

"I've been thinking about it," Piper tells her. "I know which are the most valuable."

" _You_ are very resourceful," Alex tells in a husky, teasing voice, stepping toward Piper. "This idea's looking better and better."

Piper's eyes are roaming and hungry, and she bites down on her lower lip in a way that unravels something in Alex's chest.

They're leaning in when a door opens in an outer room, and Piper springs away from Alex like she's been shocked.

"Miss Piper?" A male voice calls out.

Piper's face is white as a sheet, her eyes huge. She seems frozen. Alex holds a finger to her lips, then grabs Piper's hand, pulling her behind an open closet door in the corner of the room just as the main door to the bedroom opens, footsteps entering the room. Alex waits for the sound of their retreat before peering out, seeing the back of a suit heading through the steering room for the other bedroom.

"I'll sneak out," Alex whispers, waiting until the man is out of sight before moving quickly and stealthily through the room. She's at the door before she realizes Piper is following her.

Alex is in the corridor, Piper two steps behind her, when she hears a voice from inside shout Piper's name. "Run!" Piper hisses, slamming the door too hard behind her.

They take off down the hall. Alex can't resist a look over her shoulder; she recognizes the servant who'd been flanking Piper's father earlier that day, outside the makeshift chapel. She remembers the gun in his jacket and feels a stab of worry, concerned she's put Piper in actual danger, but when she glances sideways, Piper's bright eyed and laughing, her face lit up with the thrill of blatantly defying a rule.

They barely avoid collision with some affronted looking passengers, and behind them the valet starts running, too. Alex speeds up, grabbing Piper's hand as she pulls her around a corner, past the stares and heading for a bank of elevators. She drops it automatically as they scramble inside, startling the hell out of the operator.

"Take us down, quickly, quickly, c'mon," Their voices overlap as they scramble to pull the doors closed, and the stressed out operator pulls his lever just as Bill Chapman's valet nearly slams into the elevator's gate. Alex lifts her middle finger in a rude and unladylike gesture that makes Piper snort with mirth, the sound equally unladylike.

As the lift descends, Alex quickly sobers up, sliding her gaze to Piper to see if she's rattled by these events. Piper meets her eyes and gives a small, matter of fact sigh. "Well. It appears my last three days with my family will not be pleasant ones."

They hold each others eyes for a beat, acknowledging the truth of that, and then they start laughing together, because they are young and breathless with happily aching muscles and this is all the best kind of crazy.

The elevator lets them off in the E-Deck foyer, and Alex shoves her hands in her coat and walks beside Piper, both of them fighting smiles, competing for serious expressions. Alex looks back and sees the valet getting off another lift. She elbows Piper in the side and speeds up, leading her down the stairs for F-Deck and opening a door labeled Crew Only.

It's a fan room, loud and cramped with equipment. There's a ladder leading down below, seemingly to the boiler room based on the steam rising and heating up the small space. Piper's got her hands clamped over her ears, and Alex leans solidly against the door, just in case the Chapman's servant saw them come in. She has to shout to be heard, "Pretty tough for a fuckin' butler, this fella."

"What?!" Piper yells, and Alex just laughs and shakes her head.

She points to the ladder, raising her voice even more. "After you, m'lady."

Piper heard her this time, and her eyes narrow in disbelief, shouting back, "You must be joking."

Alex smirks. "Fine, I'll go first."

She easily scales down the ladder only stopping on two different rungs before dropping to the ground. Alex cranes her neck as soon as she hits the floor, glad to see Piper coming down after, one foot at a time. She has to jump the final few feet to the bottom; Alex automatically reaches out to steady her waist in the landing.

Alex's glasses fog up almost instantly, and she takes them off and sticks them in her shirt pocket, shouting to Piper, "You're going to have to lead!"

Piper nods, but it attracts the attention of a nearby worker, a man gleaming with sweat and smeared with coal, shouting at them in an accented lilt, "Wha' are you two doin' down 'ere? Shouldn't be down 'ere, it's dangerous...oy!"

They take off running, Piper shouting an apology behind them. The boiler room is like an eerily beautiful vision of Hell, with its roaring furnaces and black silhouettes moving in the smoky orange glow.

Alex and Piper run the length of the room, past bewildered stokers shoveling into furnaces. Alex stays right at Piper's back, her hands scrambling for purchase every time they pull up short to dodge a trimmer with a wheelbarrow full of coal. Her heart is racing drunkenly, lungs thick and hot, and Alex thinks of all the stories she told Piper, every tale she was so fascinated by, and how none of them compare to this.

They come to an open watertight door labeled BOILER ROOM SIX and Piper stops running, looking at Alex for instruction. Alex goes inside, fitting herself into a maddeningly hot alley between two boilers, hidden in the dark, out of sight of the work crew.

Piper squeezes right next to her, seizing hold of the front of Alex's shirt that's sticking to her chest. Alex takes hold of Piper's hips and pulls her close, rounding her mouth against the slick, sweaty skin of Piper's throat. Noise is thundering around them, so Alex can't hear the sound Piper makes but she feels it, vibrating against her tongue and teeth. Piper winds her arms around Alex's neck, pressing into her, and Alex cradles her face in her hands to kiss her properly again, salty and hot in the fiery steam.

After awhile of that, Alex remembers herself; she always has to. Reluctantly, Alex disengages her mouth and they emerge from the shadows.

Her eyes are stinging with sweat, rendering her vision even more useless than it already is, but then she feels Piper's hand slip into hers, and tug her forward. Nearly blind, Alex lets her lead, only vaguely aware of stepping through a door when suddenly the heat is replaced by a shock of sickly cool air.

Alex swipes her sleeve across her face, then retrieves her glasses and gives them a somewhat smudged cleaning on her shirt before putting them back and taking in their surroundings.

They're in a cargo hold, with high ceilings and piled, roped up stacks of luggage and crates. Piper's hugging herself against the sudden cold, and Alex shrugs out of her coat and drapes it around Piper's shoulders. Piper smiles at her, grateful, then says, "That was almost as fun as the dancing."

Alex grins. "I was thinking the same thing."

They weave through the stacks of cargo, and Alex reaches out to idly touch the metal fastenings on some of them, a vague notion of pawing around inside first class luggage flitting through her head, but she quickly dismisses it, sure Piper wouldn't approve.

They come to a deep burgundy touring car, so shiny it must be close to new. Alex beats Piper to it, taking a showy position beside the door the backseat, bowing stiffly. "Your coach, madame."

Piper smiles like she's trying not to, quickly wrestling it flat to adopt a demure, royal persona. She takes Alex's hand and allows herself to be helped into the car. Alex shuts the door behind her and climbs into the drivers seat, running a hand over the leather and wood. "I've never even ridden one of these," Alex says. She pauses, then turns around just in time to see Piper pushing down the partition between the front and backseat, leaning on Alex's seat. "Maybe you should be driving."

"I've only ever been a passenger. You have to figure it out."

"Fine, fine, I'll give it a shot." She leans on the horn, the honk echoing through the cargo hold.

"Alex!" Piper scolds, already laughing.

Alex raises her voice above the sound. "Is this not how you start it?"

"Jesus." Piper's laughing against Alex's hair. "Between the furnaces and your idiocy I'm going to go deaf on this ship..." She reaches around Alex with both arms, pulling her hands off the horn. The sound cuts off, but Piper doesn't let her go, tugging Alex over the seat and into the back with her.

It's roomy there, a plushly upholstered bench seat set a distance from the lowered partition. There are cut crystal bud vases on the walls, each containing a single rose - these people even decorate their fucking cars.

Alex lands beside Piper on the seat, and she wraps an arm around her at the same moment Piper leans into her chest, and just like that Alex is holding her, the first chance she's gotten to do it; she stays just far enough away to get a good look. Piper's skin is still slick with sweat, face flushed, hair wild at the edges but wet and matted to her forehead. She's smiling, full of absolute trust. She looks beautiful and young. She is the brightest thing Alex has ever seen.

* * *

"Are you okay?"

"Yes..."

"Is this - "

"Yes, yes. _"_

 _..._

"Al...Alex..."

"Yeah?"

"This is my first time.."

"With a woman."

"With anyone."

"Oh. I thought - "

"We were...we were meant to be waiting."

"Should I stop?"

"No, no, please don't...you just have to show me."

"We can go slow."

"Alright..."

...

...

"Piper?"

"Mmm?"

"It's a first for me, too."

"First time with a spoiled rich girl?"

"Not even close."

"Jerk. Then what?"

"I've never...I've never cared who I was with before."

...

"I've never wanted it this much."

* * *

Alex's fingers hold masterpieces, and it's the only way this makes sense. Her hands have been everywhere, touched every inch of Piper's skin, learning her on their own - she could sketch Piper blind, now.

Her hand is between Piper's legs, fingers inside her, curling and thrusting with firm patience. The two of them are stretched out across the bench seat in the automobile, barely fitting, Piper on her back with Alex's face looming over hers, taking up her entire field of vision. Alex sucks Piper's bottom lip between hers, and Piper forgets to be embarrassed of the noises leaping out of her with wild abandon. Her whole body is trembling, straining up, straining closer, each arch and twitch occurring entirely outside of her control.

She twists the hand not braced against the front seat into Alex's hair, so hard it must hurt. Sensation is ripping through her in treacherous waves, it feels good, she wants Alex right where she is forever, but at the same time it almost hurts, she needs _more_ , but Piper doesn't have the words to ask for it. She whimpers Alex's name like it's the first word she learned.

Alex's fingers speed up, the pressure tightening, her thumb sweeping higher, but in contrast, she lifts her free hand from Piper's breast - where the corset's been loosened but not entirely abandoned - and gently traces the curve of Piper's cheek, her lips returning to Piper's, tender and graceful.

Inexplicable tears gather in the corner of Piper's eyes; she is feeling _so much_. It's like waking up.

She lets go in long, strangled moan that might contain the broken syllables of Alex's name, and there's a rush of wetness between her legs and down Alex's wrist.

Alex's forehead drops against hers, and she's shaking from the effort of supporting her weight. Their breaths sound harsh and loud in the empty quiet of the cargo hold, and Piper wraps her hands around the nape of Alex's neck like she can keep her there. Alex kisses her, slow, sweet, almost weightless; Piper's throat tingles the way it does when she's about to cry.

"You okay?" Alex whispers between kisses.

Piper nods hard, like she's lost the power of speech and needs to be particularly emphatic. She feels like her heart has come loose in her chest and is slipping around, wild and untethered. She wraps her arms around Alex, tracing the curve and bumps of her spine, the pointed edges of her shoulder blades. "Thank you," she whispers after a bit, her voice an absolute mess.

Alex laughs at her, sweetly. "My pleasure, kid."

Piper lays still and silent for a long moment, waiting for her breathing to steady, and then she asks shyly, right into Alex's ear, "Can I do you?"

Alex leans back again, grinning down at Piper. Her coat, shirt and glasses are off, suspenders hanging loosely at her waist. "You don't have to ask."

* * *

S **unday, April 14, 1912**

 **10:17 pm**

* * *

Piper feels unsteady on her feet when she follows Alex out of a crew door that leads them onto the well deck. It's proper night by now, and it feels strange, like they're emerging to a different time and place.

They'd still been lying together in the thick, exhilarating heat of the car's backseat when a door had slammed. Alex had dressed in all of ten seconds, then rushed off, diverting attention by making noise in the opposite corner of the cargo hold until Piper could get fully clothed. Somehow, she'd managed to sprint back to Piper and out of the hold without being seen.

She throws Piper a dizzying smile, and Piper moves close to her out of instinct. She wants to be touching her, can hardly bear the lack of contact now. It doesn't seem fair.

But Alex just leans against the railing, appearing perfectly content as Piper comes stand beside her, shuffling close enough so their shoulders press together. Piper cuts her eyes to look at her; Alex's lips are swollen and shining. It makes Piper want to kiss her, but she checks herself when she notices the Crow's Nest looming above them, the figures of two lookouts keeping watch.

It makes her mood turn somber again as she realizes, "I suppose Cameron's still looking for me."

"Cameron?"

"Father's valet. He likely has Father and Larry in on the search by now." Piper frowns, missing the foolish invincibility she'd felt earlier, running away from the servant as though it was all a child's game of hide and seek, of no real consequence. "I need to go back. Appease them." She pauses before admitting, "I...I'm afraid of what he'll do to you, Alex."

Alex's eyes soften. "Don't worry about me. I'm a perpetual survivor, remember."

"Still. It's better if we're not hiding out for the rest of the journey." Regret seeping into her expression, Piper takes Alex's hand and squeezes it. "I'll find you tomorrow, if I can. If not - "

"Three days," Alex finishes, a thrill singing through her voice.

"Less now, really," Piper corrects.

"You're right."

"Goodnight, Alex."

"Goodnight, Piper. Night."

* * *

Her parents and Larry are all waiting for her in the sitting room when Piper gets back.

"Good of you to join us," her father says, his voice dead flat. He flicks a glance away from her, crisply addressing the valet. "Cameron, wait outside, please. In case her _friend_ attempts to join us again."

The older man nods and leaves, and Bill stands up, pacing in front of Piper. "You not only directly defy me, but you bring her _here_. Give her free reign to search our things."

"She didn't - " Piper cuts herself off, swallows. Then she gives the half-lie she decided on during her walk back. "I wanted to show her the paintings. She's an artist in America, I thought she might have an opinion on the value back in The States."

Her father stops moving, a disbelieving look on his face. " _When_ did you become so relentlessly foolish? The girl has nothing, and you believe she'll be able to advise you on financial values."

Piper flinches, tries to let the insult roll off her. It doesn't matter. Nothing he thinks matters anymore.

Three more days, two really, just two more -

"I'm off to look for her myself."

"No!" Piper cries out before she can stop herself, grabbing hold of her father's arm as he walks off. He easily swats her away, the back of his hand thudding against her cheek. Not hard, but sudden and startling.

Her eyes move away, looking for help, but her mother's expression is impassive, and Larry seems unable to even look at her.

"Sit down, Piper," Bill says, dismissive. "A sum of cash is missing from the safe in our stateroom. There's only one possible conclusion."

Anger flares in her chest, and it makes her brave again. "I was with her the whole time. And we never opened the safe."

"Ah, well in that case, at least you've cast your lot with a _skilled_ thief," he says, sounding disgusted with her, throwing her a look that somehow makes her feel guilt for everything she's just done. Piper drags her eyes away from his, trying to stop; nothing that felt so good, so _right_ , should make her feel guilty.

But she can't bring herself to say anything as her father strides out. Her mother gives her a cold, disappointed glare and holds it for several uncomfortable heartbeats before retreating into her room. Larry stays where he is, stiff in a chair, still not indicating that he's aware of her presence. That suits Piper just fine. She doesn't feel much like speaking to him, either.

* * *

When Piper is gone, Alex finds a bench along the edge of the railing, the place where the hiss of waves becomes a roar. Only when she pulls out a cigarette and tries to light it does she notice her fingers are shaking. She pulls the stolen coat a little tighter around herself and lies down on her back.

Alex's mother believed in God; she took her to church some Sundays, and in the roughest times, when they had nowhere to stay in the winter, they sometimes spent full days in chapels, just to be out of the snow.

Still, for Alex religion is only a distant murmur of her mother's voice and the Lord's Prayer, the welcome warmth of a sanctuary, the scratch of her pencil copying the figures from the stain glass windows onto the margins of a hymnal.

She doesn't pray, doesn't believe in it, or even really know how. But the word _please_ is running through her head on a desperate loop.

Alex has never let herself want anything this badly. And right now, she has every reason to believe she can have it.

That's the part that terrifies her.

 _Please_.

 _Please let me keep this._

Then the world begins to tremble, and it's like an answer Alex doesn't want to hear.

* * *

The sitting room starts shaking, and Piper and Larry look at each other in a startled instinct, the first time in nearly an hour they've done so. They both jump when the clock falls off the fireplace, shattering on the floor. Larry calls out for Piper's maid, and she comes hurrying in to tidy up as the shaking finally stops with a final, hard shudder.

Carol joins them in the sitting room, her face pale. "What was that?"

"Probably thrown a propeller blade," Larry informs her with false authority. He's back to not looking at Piper.

Five minutes later, her father comes striding back in looking irritated which Piper takes to mean he didn't find Alex.

Larry looks up at him. "Sir? Did you feel the shudder?"

"We've hit ice, it seems. Incompetent engineers didn't turn soon enough."

Piper hears her mother gasp. Larry frowns. "Did it damage the ship?

"It didn't seem like much of a bump. Likely just an inconvenience to everyone, but they've ordered us to wait for instructions - "

"Sir!" Cameron's voice floats through the open door to the corridor, and a moment later he comes in, his grip firmly locked on Alex's arm.

* * *

The iceberg had loomed like a big glacial mountain, and Alex had leaned over the starboard railing to get a look, unable to see any damage at the hull of the ship. The quaking of the ship had stopped fairly quickly, leaving a sense of anticlimax; behind her, several steerage children had kicked around pieces of ice, giggling as though it were a snow day.

But then she had seen the captain himself, flanked by several other important looking men, striding grim faced toward the well deck, and Alex had understood this must be bad.

She'd lost her hat sometime during the earlier chase, so she'd donned the coat on its own and snuck to the first class area, with no difficulty whatsoever - anyone who might have stopped her was clearly preoccupied. She'd intended to just wait in the corridor, out of sight, until she could snag Piper the same way she'd done during her tour earlier.

But the first class corridor was busy, full of stewards calmly reassuring passengers who were emerging with questions, and Alex had failed to notice the Chapman's valet until he grabbed hold of her, dragging her into Piper's suite.

Piper blanches when she sees Alex, and Alex's gaze locks on hers, trying to silently convey that everything's alright.

"You," Bill Chapman points to a diminutive maid hovering in a corner. "Find a steward, tell him fetch the Master at Arms. Quickly." The girl nods and hurries off.

Alex fights the grip, confused and angry at the mention of the ship's law enforcer. "What the hell is this - "

Piper stands up. "Father, I _told_ you, she didn't do anything."

"Piper, _sit down_ and shut your mouth."

Alex bristles. "You always talk to your daughter like that?"

Bill rounds on her, fire eyed, voice dripping disdain. " _You_ are not to speak to me."

Two stewards and someone who must be the Master of Arms come in, then, and the latter addresses Bill. "What seems to be the problem, sir?"

"I've been robbed." Alex jerks her eyes away from Piper, giving him a shocked look. "And _this_ woman was in my suite earlier, which was my daughter's mistake - "

The Master of Arms nods at the stewards. "Search her."

The valet pulls off her coat and tosses it to a steward as the Master of Arms pats her down.

"This is such horseshit," Alex snaps. "You know the ship hit a goddamn iceberg and you're wasting your time on - "

"Not yours, I presume," The steward cuts her off, holding up a wad of cash, the one Bill had stuffed into the pocket of her coat that morning. Alex blinks at it, horrified as she realizes what's happening, how neatly she's been set up.

"This what you're missing, sir?"

"That's it."

Piper is staring at her stunned. Alex can practically see realizations crawling across her face: every time Alex has casually mentioned stealing books, or food, or art supplies. Alex circling the rooms on her own, admiring the suite.

The Master of Arms is starting to handcuff her, but Alex forgets everyone else in the room and starts talking to directly Piper, her voice fierce and desperate. "Piper, you know I didn't take it, he _gave_ it to me."

Bill chuckles humorlessly. "Oh, splendid, now I've _given_ her a large sum of money, how charitable of me..."

"Not her coat, either, sir," one of the stewards speaks up, reading a label on the inside. "Property of Ronald James."

"That was reported stolen earlier today," the Master of Arms adds, closing the cuffs around her wrists.

Piper's expression is swarmed with hurt and uncertainty, and Alex's voice catches as she explains, the words rushing out, "Piper, no, he gave it to me, he said it was a reward if I didn't see you again."

Alex sees it, the moment Piper believes her, and relief blooms in her chest but instantly freezes when Piper says in a small voice, "And you took it? That's _worse_."

They're dragging her out into the hallway, muttering at her not to make a fuss, but Alex is fighting it, struggling to maintain eye contact with Piper. She is filled to the brim with panic, the iceberg forgotten, the presence of Piper's family and fiance forgotten, everything blown out of her head except the hurt on Piper's face. "You know I wouldn't do that, he made me take it, _Piper_ , I've never lied to you, you _know_ that. Piper - "

And then they've pulled her out the door and slammed it, cutting her off from Piper. The door opens seconds later, but it's only the valet, accompanied, for some reason, by Larry.

The Master at Arms lead Alex down the hall, Larry and the servant flanking them, passing stewards carrying stacks of white life belts.

They take her down several levels to the Master at Arms office and handcuff her to a water pipe, forcing her to stay standing. A crewman runs in. "You're wanted by the Purser, sir. Urgently."

"Go on," the valet, Cameron Piper says his name is, tells him. "We'll keep an eye on her. She's not going anywhere."

The Master of Arms nods, tossing a handcuff key to Cameron before taking his leave. The older man begins to whistle, flipping the key in the air and catching it. Larry is staring at Alex with a distant, inscrutable expression.

She levels a cold stare at the valet. "You fucking _saw_ him give me that money, you prick."

He crosses over to her, pulling the gun from his jacket, and Alex shrinks instinctively away just before the barrel slams into her face. "Mr. Bill Chapman sends his reminders that you were warned of this," he says calmly.

Alex's vision explodes white, her cheek wet, on fire. Her glasses clatter to the floor. She leans back against the wall of the ship, gasping.

Cameron walks calmly away from her, nodding at Larry. "You know I think the ship may sink...I doubt it is in our best interests to wait here for that to happen."

Dimly, Alex hears Larry stammer a reply, obviously unnerved by the doom in the sentiment. "I...I'll be along in a moment."

Sucking in a deep, pained breath, Alex struggles to blink her vision clear and look at Larry. He's staring at her, looking almost dazed. She remembers the first thing Piper ever told her about him, that he really was a good man, nicer than her father.

"Larry." He takes a step back, seeming startled at being addressed by his first name. "If you've known Piper's father as long as she says, then you _know_ there's a good chance I'm telling the truth." He looks away, the lack of conviction encouraging Alex. "And if what she says about _you_ is true...you're not someone who would leave an innocent person to drown."

There's a long pause, long enough that Alex's heart is pumping hope, but then Larry jerks his head up to look at her. "I saw you two," he clenches out, the words strained and tight.

Alex's heart sinks. "What?"

"When you were in the suite. I was on the promenade, I came back to look for Piper." His face twists, tortured. "I saw what...what you did to her."

"What _I_ did to _her_?" Alex repeats softly, her head swimming with visions of that kiss in front of a work of art.

He starts shaking his head and doesn't stop. "Piper isn't like that. She's _normal_ , you must've..." He lets out an unhinged, humorless laugh. "You made her. She's easily influenced, doesn't think for herself - "

"I think you know that's not true," Alex says, trying not to sound scornful, trying to remember he may be her only way out of here.

But then Larry glares at her, blazing and hateful, extinguishing any hope she has. "I don't care how the hell you got that money. You are _not_ innocent."

Then he, too, turns and walks away.

* * *

 _A/N: let me know what you think! Update should be along in the next few days, I think two more chapters of this one...also keep an eye out for a Christmas related oneshot._


	6. Chapter 6

**April 15, 1912**

 **12:17 am**

* * *

Not two minutes after they take Alex away, during which neither of Piper's parent have deemed her worthy of even a glance, a steward knocks on their suite door and comes in without being invited.

He speaks directly to her father. "Sir, I've been told to ask you to please put on your lifebelts and come up to boat deck."

Bill sighs, sharp and impatient. "Is that really necessary?"

The steward begins pulling the white lifebelts down from a top shelf in the dresser, handing one to Piper's mother first. "I'm sorry about the inconvenience, Mr. Chapman, but it _is_ Captain's orders. Now dress warmly, please, it's quite cold out tonight..."

He hands Piper a belt, then pauses, seeming to read something on her face. "Not to worry, miss. I'm sure it's just a precaution."

But she isn't worried about the ship, or the iceberg, can't even really process what's happening. She's been knee deep in disaster since the moment Cameron dragged Alex into their suite, and that one feels more immediate and devastating.

She isn't sure what to believe.

Alex had the money, and she hadn't mentioned it to Piper all day; if it's true that Piper's father gave it to Alex, bribed her to stay away - and it sounds like him, and his staunch belief that everything he wants is for sell - then it must have happened within the last hour, when Bill went to look for her. He'd offered, and Alex had accepted.

Or maybe it's all a lie; Alex is a good liar, Piper's seen her play poker. And maybe she should have seen this coming; Alex had gotten a look at Piper's vulnerability and weakness from the very beginning, that first night on the deck. She met a scared, naive little rich girl and saw an opportunity. And surely that makes more sense than the idea that someone like Alex met someone like Piper and fell for her that quickly.

Except if either of those things are true, whether Alex just accepted Bill's bribe or stole the money herself...then why did she come back?

Piper can't think of an answer until her mother ignores the increasingly insistent steward to return to her stateroom for a broach, and comes out wearing no less than five pieces of jewelry.

She'd shown Alex her jewels, mentioned their value; and Alex knew about the iceberg - she could have snuck into the First Class deck, _again_ , to wait for them to clear out of the suite. Piper made it so easy.

 _Fuck her_ , Piper thinks as she follows her parents and a few servants through the corridors to the boat deck. _Fuck that liar_. She is trying and trying to mean it, but she can feel the threat of tears everywhere: eyes, throat, chest.

Piper's holding a lifebelt limp in her hand, as though it hasn't really sunk in what it's for or why she has it. They join a crowd of other first class passengers in the A Deck foyer, most of them in lifebelts. There's a general atmosphere of unease and irritation, strangely underscored by a jumpy piano rhythm floating out of a nearby lounge.

Bill walks at the front of the group, handing his own lifebelt to one of the maids trailing them, and they stop near the base of the staircase as Piper's father scans in the crowd. "Where's Andrews?"

"Hi." Piper turns with her parents at the sudden return of Larry, hurrying up to them with the valet striding calmly behind, but it's clear Larry is only addressing her father.

Bill lifts a brow. "Is it taken care of?"

Larry nods curtly, and Piper's stomach thickens with a panic she can't quite access. Scanning the surroundings, Larry asks, "What's going on?"

"Just the goddamned English doing everything by the book..." Bill's eyes barely graze Piper, not settling as he mutters, "As if we don't have enough to deal with." He snaps his fingers to get Cameron's attention, moving over to the valet. "Find me someone who knows what's going on..."

When he's out of earshot, Piper grabs Larry's arm. "What did he mean, taken care of?" Larry actually turns his head away from her, the muscles in his face taut. " _Larry_."

Through his teeth, he finally forces out, "He means your..." His chin shakes before he spits out, "- _inverted_ _suitor_ is locked up."

A chill curls around Piper's bones, because Larry's voice isn't a question but an accusation. Her mouth dry, it takes a moment for Piper to rasp out, "Don't say that, that's _vile_."

For the first time, Larry's gaze hits hers, and it lands like a physical weight. His eyes are so cold. "No. That's you." He shakes his head. "And all for a lying thief."

The words, the certainty there, have barely left his mouth when Piper's father cuts between the two of them, fortunately not paying them attention, calling out, "Andrews!"

The ship's builder is about ten feet away, but he turns at his name and walks toward them, looking as though he's having to drag the weight of his body. As though oblivious to the look on the other man's face, Bill asks, "What's the damage here?"

Andrews stares at him blankly for a moment, but then he looks at Piper, and instantly apology leaks into his dazed expression. Maybe he sees the terror on her face. Maybe he misreads the reason.

"The ship will sink."

Her father stiffens, bluster gone. Beside Piper, Larry's mouth hangs open. "You're certain?"

"Yes, quite." Andrews' throat works furiously for a moment. "In an hour or so...all this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic."

"My God..." It takes Piper a moment to identify her father's voice; it's the first time she's ever heard him at such a loss, with nothing to demand or dismiss.

"Tell only who you must, we're trying to curtail a panic..." Andrews looks at Piper again, gaining both strength and urgency. "Get to a boat. Quickly. _Don_ ' _t_ wait. You remember, what I told you about the boats?"

Piper does. Larry told her first, had thrown it out as smug trivia after his ship tour, thoughtless to the implications. There aren't enough lifeboats for half the passengers.

The first thing she thinks of is Alex.

But the second is Larry, the way the disgusted accusation is gone from his face, chased away by a sort of stunned fear.

Surely with all this going on, what he knows - or thinks he knows - won't matter anymore, won't turn into a weapon to use against her.

* * *

Alex's glasses had landed only a few feet away, but it takes her nearly five minutes to hook her foot around them and drag them close enough for her cuffed wrists to grab.

When she straightens up, vision clear again, there's blood on her shirt, as well as a few drops splattered onto the floor of the Master at Arm's office; her face feels stiff and itchy where it's starting to dry, the cut along her cheekbone still throbbing.

The pipe she's cuffed around rises straight up from the office floor, then curves and runs parallel to the ceiling. Alex tries bracing her feet against the wall, pulling the cuffs tight against the pipe, but the chain between cuffs are too short, the pipe too low to get the proper leverage. She changes tactics, winding her arms around the pipes and trying to pull them apart, throwing her body back until she's sweat soaked and sore.

There's a gurgling sound from somewhere over her shoulder, and when Alex looks back, there's water pouring into the room from under the door, a pool rapidly spreading.

" _Fuck_..." Alex curls her fingers inwardly, trying to tug her hand through the handcuffs, working furiously around her knuckles, rubbing her skin raw. She feels the water hit her feet, genuine fear nipping at her ankles, closing in. "FUCK!"

It doesn't even occur to her to call for help; it's not something Alex has ever learned how to do.

* * *

One of the officer's call for women and children among the first class, and there's a slow, uncertain exodus onto the deck. The band that plays in the dining room every night has assembled at the entrance, a lively, elegant waltz wafting over the crowd; the boat deck is deceptively unchanged, almost calm.

Piper watches as the first lifeboat is loaded, the women hesitant and in some cases terrified to step over the gap to the dangling vessel. Many families pouring out of the first class entrance have to be ordered to leave their luggage inside.

After fifteen minutes, Piper follows her family to a second lifeboat. The officer who greets them holds up a hand to Larry and Bill. "Women and children only, sirs. No men yet."

Closer to the boat, Piper steps straight into the reality of what's happening. Husbands say goodbye to wives and children, fear and distress everywhere she looks.

"Bill," her mother is saying. "Try to get back to the room before they call for the men. Or send Tracy to do it - the emerald necklace in the safe, it slipped my mind."

"Of course, dear," Bill says, the voice he always uses, like he's barely listening, giving her a crisp kiss on the cheek and helping her into the lifeboat.

Piper watches her mother settle next to two other wives she recognizes from the dinners, smoothing her skirt and turning to her friend, "I hope they won't overcrowd the boats, God knows how long we'll have to sit here."

"Piper, get in the boat," her father orders, all familiar impatience, as though she's merely delayed in getting dressed for some important function. Behind him, Larry's face is a pale, anxious mask but Bill seems unaffected. There's nothing in his face to suggest distress.

"Don't you understand what's happening?" It tears out of her without intention. "They won't load the men until the women and children have gone, and there aren't enough boats...not enough by _half_. You may never see us again."

Bill smiles at her like she's six years old. "Not to worry, darling. Larry and I will work something out. If only half the passengers can be saved, I have no doubt it will be the better half."

With the words, his smile changes. No longer familiar, or affectionate; Piper can see the fangs and the menace. The venomous truth of her father.

And she remembers the way Alex looked at her. There had been truth there, too.

"You're a bastard," she breathes out.

Her father's eyes flare, storming with shocked fury. " _Excuse_ me?"

Piper doesn't spare him another moment. She shifts her shoulders and turns away, letting his anger slide off her back.

They call her name, her parents, their voices united, maybe the only time she's ever heard such a thing. Bill's booms rage, her mother's strangled confusion and perhaps some genuine worry.

But it's Larry that catches up to her on the deck, grabbing the back of her dress without gentleness.

"What are you thinking?"

Piper rounds on him, shaking with bottled rage, and even before he lets her go she seizes _him_ , harder, around the collar. "Where is she?!"

"Jesus, Piper - "

Over his shoulder, Piper sees her father coming toward them, fast. She keeps her glare on Larry, and a monster rises, out of nowhere, to her throat and snarls, _"Where_?!"

There is no reason at all that he should tell her. Piper has no power in that moment other than her own anger and Larry's weaknesses. But he bends to her apparent authority, stammers like he can't help but give her what she's demanding, "The Master at Arm's office. The very bottom stop of the lifts. But Piper - "

She's already gone.

There's only one elevator operator standing by the row of gates, currently attempting to explain to a family arguing in another language that the lifts are closed, but Piper doesn't wait for permission - she may not ask permission for the rest of her life, for anything - just runs confidently into the elevator furthest from the operator and slides the gate shut on her own.

The man turns at the noise, hurrying toward her. "Miss, the lifts are closed, you can't be there unattended - " His hand smacks the iron of the gate as Piper pushes the lever herself.

The elevator begins to descend, various lower decks passing by, eerily empty. She reaches the bottom floor and water rushes in, an icy waterfall. Piper yelps in surprise, falling against the back wall, her heart racing. It's so cold.

She fumbles the gates open and steps into a hallway that isn't quite level, water nearly thigh deep. Cushions and chairs and luggage float by, and it's the first time the ship has shown Piper evidence of its impending demise.

Piper has to hike her skirts up to move through the water. She locates a doorway with a gold plaque warning CREW ONLY nearby and, encouraged, moves through it only to find a maze of identical corridors.

"ALEX?" Desperation weaves through the word, like Piper's the one begging for rescue rather than trying to give it. " _ALEX_!"

Piper shivers and she slogs through the water and she yells Alex's name like a distress signal, nudging open every shut door just in case.

* * *

After ten minutes of trying to wedge herself between the wall and the pipe and push, Alex has gained nothing but an aching back and limp arms. She's sweating from the effort, but shaking from the chill of the water, to her knees now.

Alex closes her eyes, rests for just a second. Thinks of Piper. She's probably on a lifeboat right now, and it's good that she's safe, but remembering the rest of it - what Piper thinks of her, never seeing her again, what Larry knows - makes Alex the kind of exhausted that feels like _giving up_.

But no. She said it to Piper, labeled herself a perpetual survivor. If there's even a _chance_ -

Positioning her hands so she can wrap her righthand fingers around her left thumb, Alex experimentally works the bone and joint. She'll have to break her own thumb, can maybe slip from one of the cuffs that way. She traces the length of the bone as though testing her own fragility, and flexes the muscles of her other hand, a summon for her strength.

Then somehow, miraculously, Piper's voice reaches her, calling her name, and Alex's bones stay whole and her heart starts beating out hope.

It's so faint the first time that Alex is scared to believe it's real, but then it comes again, a far away shout. "Alex!"

"Piper?!" She starts clanging the metal cuffs against the white piping, just making noise. "In here! I'm here!"

Piper bursts in and it creates a wave, the door rocking the water throughout the office. Her face is white and vivid and she doesn't stop saying Alex's name even when her eyes finally land on her. "Alex... _Alex_..." She splashes over, hugs her hard. Alex's hands strain the cuffs in their eagerness to touch her. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." The words are muffled in Alex's neck.

As she's been holding the explanation between her teeth, Alex blurts out straight away, "He put the cash in my pocket and walked away, Piper, he wouldn't let me give it back - "

"It doesn't matter, I know. I'm so sorry." Then, pulling back, Piper's face falls and she reaches up to touch Alex's face. "What did they do to you?" Her eyes widen. "It wasn't _Larry..._?"

"God, no, your father's glorified manservant got me with the damn gun."

"I'm sorry," she says again, softer this time.

"Not your fault," Alex answers, her smile turning into forgiveness.

Piper smiles back, laced with relief. After a moment, she looks down as though noticing Alex's predicament for the first time. "Is there a key?"

"He took it. Probably tossed it in the water by now." A chill shivers in Alex's chest; Piper's presence feels so much like salvation, she nearly forgot it isn't that simple.

"Alright..." Piper's voice bends, and she curls two fingers around the chain of the handcuffs and tugs, like she's trying to prove it fallible. "Alright, so I'll go get help."

Alex swallows, deciding, "Good. But Piper." She waits until Piper looks at her. "If you can't find anyone in...maybe fifteen minutes or so, you need to get on a lifeboa - "

"No." Piper throws the word down like a knife, cutting off the end of Alex's sentence. There's something in her face that Alex has never seen there before, a heated ferocity. "I'm not leaving you."

"Piper, if they're already loading boats, you can't wait to - "

"Shut up," she says sternly, and then she's kissing her, enforcing the command. When they pull back, Piper lifts the sleeve of her coat, wet from dragging in the water, and carefully wipes at the blood on Alex's cheek. "I _will_ be back." Her voice makes it clear that's a promise. Alex winces when she accidentally touches the open cut, the salt water stinging exposed flesh. "Sorry. Again."

Alex makes an attempt at a smirk. "Don't worry, I'll stay right here."

* * *

Piper's wading down the hallway once again, and she feel the distinct weight of her coat dragging in the water, slowing her down. On impulse, she shrugs out and lets it float away. Moving unimpeded now, she makes it to a stairwell leading up to another deck; it's all to evident this one is deserted.

Once she makes it up a level there's no longer flooding, and it's a relief to start running again. She recognizes the steerage accommodations, can glimpse a few bunks identical to Alex's through open doors. A vague notion seizes Piper: Alex's sketches, Alex's _mother's_ sketches, must be in one of these rooms, and soon they'll be soaked wet and ruined. But third class berthing is a labyrinth, and Piper has no idea how to find Alex's room again.

So she keeps going, calling out for help and getting no answer. She hears pounding steps behind her and spins around to see an older man sprinting down the hall with a suitcase in his hand. In an urgent stream of words, she says, "Sir, please, we need help, there's a woman who's - "

He pushes past her, eyes wild, not even slowing down or acknowledging her presence, and Piper feels as though she's fallen into a bad dream, the kind where she can scream at the top of her lungs or wave her arms all about but still remain invisible.

The lights in the hallway flicker and then give out, plunging the corridor into darkness that seems to burrow down into Piper's chest. She falls back against the wall, scared and hating herself for it. Her father's voice whispers through her, a reminder that nothing has ever been required of her, her whole life. No one has ever needed her help before this moment.

And she is failing.

The lights turn back on, and Piper sets her jaw and starts walking again. She opens her mouth, but the word _help_ lodges in her throat like a shard of glass. Somehow, she knows there's no one here.

Her gaze skims past a glass case on the wall, a fire axe inside, then snaps back, a tentative plan forming.

She breaks the glass with the fire hose wound up on the wall beside it and grabs the ax, gauging the sharpness of the blade. Her hands are shaking, whether from the cold or fear she isn't sure, but she tightens them around the smooth wood of its handle and runs back the way she came, descending the staircase once again.

The water is up to her waist now, and she can't help a sharp gasp as it hits her, the temperature a physical pain. It's dark in the corridor, the few lights that survive flickering or shooting bursts of sparks. Piper holds the axe above her head and slogs forward. She finds Alex again fairly easily; she's somehow moved a desk over and is crouched on top of it, the water a few inches above the top, her pants soaked to the thighs.

Piper lifts the axe, showing her. "Will this work?"

Alex grins, impressed. "Yeah. Good thinking."

By the time Piper gets to her, she's already moved her hands as far apart as they'll go, the chain tight over the edge of the steel pipe. Piper turns so she's facing Alex, then holds the blade to the top of the chain and begins to grind it back and forth. It's thicker than she thought.

"It's okay, Piper, just swing it."

Piper snaps her head up to meet Alex's gaze. " _What_?" She glances back down; there are barley two inches between Alex's wrists.

"Hey." Alex's voice is gentle, calming, but she sounds so, so serious. "We have to get out of here. It's rising fast. Better just...get it over with." She smirks, but Piper reads the anxiety shuttering her eyes. "But if you're gonna miss, it'd be better if you went for the left hand." She wiggles her fingers. "This is the money maker, obviously."

Instinctively, Piper's hands loosen around the axe. It feels too heavy. "I can't..."

"You _can_. Here..." Alex changes the angle of her arms, curling her hands around either side of the pipe. "Easy."

"I need a moment..." Piper turns, takes a practice swing against the wall. The blade hits with a gong, and Piper feels it reverberate unpleasantly in her stomach.

"Lift up on the handle a little," Alex instructs, the slightest strain to her voice. "Try one more."

Piper does as she says and swings it again. She doesn't hit the same spot, but it felt less wild, more controlled.

"Good," Alex says, as though she can't see the two dents, six inches apart. "You're ready, Piper."

Piper turns back, takes aim, but she can't make herself swing. She's nauseous, and she keeps staring at Alex's hands, thinking about them breathing life into a page with black charcoal, or wrapping warmth around Piper's own fingers.

"Piper. I trust you," Alex says then, so steady and sure.

Her muscles tighten and the axe comes down. Somewhere during the arch Piper closes her eyes, and the sound of it, metal on metal, is horrible.

But when she opens her eyes, Alex's hands are spread wide. And she's smiling.

"Nice job, Paul Bunyan," Alex crows, nearly falling off the desk as she goes to hug Piper, laughing against her hair. Piper lets the axe drop, hugs her back, heartbeat sprinting around her chest.

Alex climbs into the water beside her, her face folding as she submerges nearly to her chest. " _Fuck_. Shit, this shit is cold. Oh, fuck..."

Her curses punctuate their slow wade into the hallway, and Piper laughs, a high, nervous sound. She finds Alex's hand behind her, underwater, and leads the way to the stairs she'd used. The water level is nearly above the stairwell's opening vestibule. They look at each other, grim faced. Alex smiles tightly. "After you."

Piper eases under the gate, the water sloshing up on her face, Alex right behind her. When they make it upstairs, they're both wet to the neck, clothes clinging, the ends of their hair dripping. Piper glances at Alex, aware she's more familiar with this part of the ship, and feels a swell of relief when Alex nods confidently in one direction before taking her hand again. "This way."

They weave through several turns and then come to a shorter stairwell that leads up to a wider passage along E-Deck, and right away she can hear the buzz of more people. Soon, they see crowds of steerage passengers, straggling along like refugees. It's a slow moving pack, providing the first stalling of Piper's momentum, and thus the first chance for her to realize how cold she is. She feels Alex press against her back, her arms rubbing the length of Piper's arms to warm her up, not seeming to care about the crowd around them. An Irishman standing with his wife and children and what must be all their luggage glances over them, then offers a flask. "Here, lass, this'll take the chill off."

Piper takes a heavy pull of whiskey, shuddering slightly before handing it to Alex, who grins and offers a mock toast before following suit. She hands it back to the man. "Thank you."

As they continue to trickle forward, Alex tugs Piper to the edge of the crowd. She rattles gates and doorknobs along their way, finding everything locked.

"Where's your family?" Alex asks Piper after a moment, out of nowhere.

"Mother's on a lifeboat. Father and Larry, I don't know." Alex glances over, her face a question. "They were trying to get me on the boat, and I ran off."

"Did he admit it about the money? Your father?"

"No." Piper holds Alex's eyes. "He didn't have to. I never should have believed him over you."

"Well, _I_ should have told you sooner that we spoke," Alex counters. "I just didn't want you to..." She stumbles slightly. "To worry."

"You mean you didn't want me to get scared and change my mind again," Piper corrects without anger. "Which is fair." She reaches over, her hand finding Alex's again even amid the push and pull of the crowd. "But I mean it, Alex. I'm not leaving you."

Alex's eye go soft, and she squeezes Piper's fingers. "Me, either."

* * *

When the corridor narrows and the sea of passengers tightens up, no longer moving at all, Alex tightens her hand on Piper and hauls her through the crowd, shouldering people out of the way, stepping around those loaded down with luggage until she can see the closed gate of a stairwell, the space in front of it solidly packed. The chaotic mix of voices is more angry than confused now, and when she's close enough Alex can see a few crew members on the other side of the gate, one yielding the handle of an axe through the bars at the clamoring crowd, another holding a gun, not looking at all certain.

"Jesus," Piper breathes out, her hand closing around the back of Alex's shirt.

Alex twists her head around, eyes darting wildly, trying to assess the situation.

"Alex!" She turns to see two of the guys she's been playing poker with, just breaking free of the mob on the stairwell.

"Will. What the hell is happening?"

"They tried to let women through, but half the men don't speak English and tried to go out the gate, too. Now the bastards are too fuckin' scared."

Alex and Piper look at each other, and Alex hopes her fear isn't as visible on her face as Piper's. "The lifts are shut down?"

She's talking to Will, but Piper surprises her by answering, "Yes."

Alex nods at her. "There are smaller stairwells. C'mon."

She's aware of Will and George following them through the chaos. A mother is changing her baby's diaper on top of a stack of luggage. A man and his family crowd around a sign, talking fast in something other than English, consulting what must be a language dictionary. A man tries to pull a sobbing woman to her feet.

They move up a narrow staircase to find a smaller group once again stopped by a gate. Here, she can actually hear the steward, shouting to be heard over the passengers' protests, repeating on loop. "Go back to the main stairwell with everyone else. They'll sort it out there."

"They're sortin' out _shite_ ," Will mutters angrily, shouldering his way to the front of the pack, where he starts shouting demands.

Alex hangs back, closes her eyes, trying to think. After a moment, she turns to Piper. "You're first class. They'll let you out."

Piper's eyes flare. "I already told you - "

"No, no, we just need to get him to open the gate. There's only one of him, he doesn't seem armed...if he'd just unlock the damn thing, we can all get out."

"Oh..." Piper glances over her shoulder at the gate, then back at Alex's. "So what do I do?"

Alex gives her a thin smile. "You're going to have to be _quite_ the little snob."

After quick, whispered instructions, Alex walks directly in front of Piper up the stairs, making a path for in the crowd. Will's gripping the bars of the gate with both hands, screaming, "For God's sakes, man! There's women and children down here! Let us up so we stand a chance." Alex tugs on his sleeve, catching his eye just long enough to give him a significant look. She moves slightly to the side, nodding sharply for Will to move. His face twists in confusion, but it distracts him long enough for Piper to step up to the steward, her face set in an entitled expression.

"Excuse me," she says, so haughty Alex has to curl her lips together to stop a smile. "But I hold a first class ticket and demand to be let out. I should have been above deck long ago."

The steward looks her up and down, uncertain, taking in her wet dress. Piper wraps her left hand around the gate, the diamond prominent, and something like pride spills warm in Alex's chest.

Suspicious, he demands, "Why are you down there, then?"

"I was answering questions about a theft in the Master at Arms office. You should have heard of it - my father, Bill Chapman, reported it early today."

He obviously recognizes the name and somehow, even in these circumstances, it carries weight. Eyes still clouded with nervous doubt, the steward pulls out a ring of keys. "Just you, now. Everyone else, back up."

He turns the key in the lock, sliding the gates barely a foot apart, and Alex catches Will's eyes and nod. They seize the bars, one on each door, and pull, other passengers crowding in to help. The steward is powerless as they stream through the gap. Piper's the first one through by virtue of her position. "Alex!"

Alex hurries forward and reclaims her hand. They start running together, out of the mass of people. "You were great," Alex tells her, a little breathless.

They don't stop running until they hit night air on the boat deck once again, thin and chilled, especially against their wet clothing, but Alex is grateful for the fresh air.

Piper, though, is staring in horror at empty davits. "The boats are gone!"

Alex swears under her breath, then jumps slightly as a series of gunshots go off; to their right, an officer is firing warning shots in the air to keep men from jumping on a boat lowering from above. "There must be more on a higher deck, hurry."

Together, they sprint past a band, set up to the side and playing a waltz. She throws a smile at Piper over her shoulder. "You folks keep it classy right up to the end, huh?"

On the port side of the ship, they find two lifeboats still waiting to be loaded. Relief breaks open in Alex's chest as she and Piper join the mercifully small crowd waiting. Piper's still shivering in her thin, short sleeved dress, so Alex folds her arms over her, pressed close. Piper stiffens for a moment, seemingly automatic, then relaxes into Alex's touch.

The officer is calling for women and children only. As they get closer to the ship's edge, a woman in front of them fights tears as her husband helps their two little girls into a lifeboat, assuring them, "There's another boat for the daddies, this boat's only for the mummies and the children...you be my brave little sailors, Mummy's the captain..."

Piper leans back against Alex like she wants to get even closer. Alex wants to distract from the grief pulsating the space around them.

"See this?" Alex murmurs close to her ear. "We may have found the only way the world will reward us both for being women." She feels Piper's laugh against her chest.

* * *

They're next in line for the boat when Piper hears her name, followed by a stiff, posturing, "Thank God."

She springs away from Alex, her head jerking to see her father and Larry pushing through the waiting women. Cameron is hovering somewhere behind them, hawk eyed.

In the next instant, though, she draws away from them. There are barely any lifeboats left, from what they've seen, and as men, neither of them will be allowed on. It doesn't matter what she says to them now, what they say. There is a twisted, guilty sort of relief to that, especially when she catches the look on Larry's face, looking between her and Alex with a sort of shocked disbelief.

"We've been looking for you everywhere."

Piper is saved having to answer when she feels Alex nudge her forward. The officer beckons her forward. "Miss, into the boat, quickly."

She moves forward, glancing back to make sure Alex is following, then catches her father's reach out of the corner of her eye. Piper flinches away out of instinct, but it's Alex he grabs, pulling her arm up to show the officer, the handcuff still damning around her wrist. "This woman is a prisoner. She was arrested earlier this evening, and you're to tell me she rates a seat above law abiding passengers?"

"Jesus Christ," Alex grits out, jerking her hand away and rolling her eyes impatiently, but Piper feels a surge instant, sickly fear. She knows that tone of her father's voice, and she knows how people bend to it. Almost always, they bend.

The officer is glancing nervously between Bill and Alex. Piper tucks her hand into the crook of Alex's elbow. "Come on, Alex. We're getting on."

But suddenly her father is in front of them, even more firm, addressing the officer. "We're well aware of the limited number of boats. I've seen several first class ladies still waiting for a seat, and you intend to give one to a third class prisoner?"

The boat is nearly full behind him, and the stressed out officer seems cowed and nervous under Bill's steely gaze. He lets his eyes skirt over Alex, muttering, "I'm sorry, miss, we're only meant to accept first and second class women at this time."

Something in Piper's chest snaps cleanly in two, and she snarls, "That is such _horseshit_!"

"It's okay, Piper," Alex says, and the change in her voice is startling. She sounds suddenly, calmly determined. "You just get in the boat."

"Yes, Piper," her father says, like a warning. " _Get_ in the boat."

Piper forces herself to ignore him, reminding herself that he's not coming, no matter what, and neither is Larry and everything he knows about them. She holds Alex's eyes, shaking her head furiously. " _Stop_ trying to make me leave you, I told you I won't do it."

"You _have_ to," Alex insists in an undertone, her face tight. "I'll be able to get one if he's not following me around reciting my criminal record, and he's not going to leave me alone if I'm with you."

Her throat narrows, and Piper keeps shaking her head. They had barely seen any lifeboats left, she knows that. Alex takes her face in her hands, eyes blazing as she urges, "It's alright, Piper, you go now and I'll meet you on the rescue ship."

She blinks against the tears trying to fill her eyes, reminding herself how wrong she was the last time she doubted Alex. Her voice thickening, she reminds her, "You said you haven't ever lied to me."

"And I'm not lying now. Promise." Alex's voice catches, just the slightest note, and Piper's so scared to believe her. She chokes back a sob, touching her fingers to the stiff, cold edge of Alex's hair.

"Good God," she hears from beside her, her father's voice. In spite of herself, Piper's heart contracts with fear. She'd nearly forgotten he was standing there.

His face is set in a paralyzed sort of shock. He's staring at her like he's never seen her before.

"Lower away!"

They hear the officer's order from behind them, and it's Alex who bursts out with, " _No_ , wait..." She pushes Piper forward. " _Go_ , go, I'll see you soon."

The officer reluctantly leans over to help her into the boat. There is _room_ for someone else, room for Alex, and Piper's insides clench like a fist when she realizes it. But then she looks back, sees Alex face, and just like terror staggers through her whole body. She reaches for her, pointless, and their fingers barely brush before Piper sits down, hard, in the boat.

"Lower away!" And this time it does, a slow, unsteady descent. Alex leans over the deck railing, trying so hard to smile reassuringly. Piper wants to yell up at her that she needs to _go_ , run away while her father is still frozen in the shock of his new knowledge, run before there are no more boats left, but she can't make her voice work.

There is a woman sobbing loudly to her left, and behind her the woman with her two daughters is trying her best _not_ to cry. Piper keeps her eyes lifted, trained on Alex, who isn't moving, and with screaming clarity Piper understands, all at once, that Alex is not going to be able to get on a lifeboat.

Her father knows. Larry knows. And they're both standing right there beside her. Somehow, they will make everything her fault, not just losing Piper, but the iceberg, the disaster raining down on all of them. If they can't be saved, they'll make sure she isn't either.

And Alex, so still, so calm, Alex the perpetual survivor...she knows it.

Her eyes brim over with tears, and Piper allows them to stream unchecked down her cheeks. All at once, she understands that she will never see Alex again, and it hurts so much she can't see straight. It is unbearable.

So she won't bear it.

Piper moves without even thinking about, standing, swaying the boat, and lunging across the two women beside her so she can hurl herself off, grabbing hold of the promenade deck one level below where she got on. There are gasps and shouts but the only one that breaks through the blood pumping in Piper's ears is Alex yelling her name from above.

She takes off for the A Deck foyer, bursting inside the doors and after a moment sees Alex banging her way down the staircase, running for her.

They slam into each other, and Alex hugs her so hard it lifts her off the ground. "You fucking _idiot_ , Piper." The words rush out of Alex, weak and wobbling. "That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen - "

"You lied to me," Piper accuses, half-sobbed and half-gasped against Alex's hair. "You were lying, Alex, you _lied_."

"I'm sorry," Alex says, and Piper thinks she might be crying but she can't see her face. "I'm sorry." Then, again, "You're so goddamn _stupid_."

Piper fights out of the embrace just enough to look at Alex, reminding her, "I told you. I won't leave without you."

Slow, Alex nods. Her eyes are tracing Piper's face, she can't seem to look away.

"Please," Piper adds, her voice tiny and full of pinholes. "Please don't make me."

Alex doesn't answer, just touches Piper's face and thumbs away tears. She doesn't agree, and Piper is a breath away from making her when suddenly Alex's face changes, her eyes huge and mouth falling open, and in the next second a gunshot splits open the air around them, the carved wooden cherub at the foot of the stair's handrail exploding less than three feet away.

" _Don't move_ ," Alex orders in a voice Piper has never heard her use, and suddenly Alex is gone, running through the foyer and down a lower flight of stairs. _  
_

Piper twists back just in time to see her father running down the steps, a gun in his hand, obviously his valet's, her face contorted with fury. He passes her without a glance; Alex must have assumed he wouldn't hurt Piper if she wasn't standing beside her.

Her stomach folds inward, and Piper starts after him, screams scraping across her throat. " _STOP IT_."

She follows Alex and her father's path down the stairs to the D-Deck reception room, where the bottom of the staircase is flooded several feet deep. Alex is splashing through the water toward the dining saloon, and as Piper watches her father fires once more, blowing a hole through the oak paneling of a wall just past Alex.

She catches up with Bill just as before he hits the water, stupidly making a grab for his arm. He slips on the stairs when he jerks away, keeping hold of the gun but landing on his side in the water. It gives Piper a chance to pass him, moving between him and Alex.

Alex looks back, sees her, and yells, "Piper, _stay where you are_."

"No!" She glances back just as her father shoots again. She catches up to Alex and grabs her arm, hard. Holding her still. " _Trust me_."

Piper turns around, her back to Alex's chest, reaching both hands back, closing around Alex's wrists, shielding her. Her father isn't shooting anymore, just wading toward them, the gun's barrel aimed at Alex, the same as aiming at Piper.

"Piper." He is quiet, which somehow makes him sound even more dangerous. "Piper, move out of the way."

"No."

" _Do_ as I'm telling you!"

"No."

"Damn it, Piper, you go with her, it's going to get you killed!"

"Maybe so." Somehow, she is managing calm. Somehow, she is still standing. "But Daddy..." She hasn't called him that in years. "You're the one with a gun to my head."

His eyes jump to his own lethal hand, as though he's only now realizing what he's doing. His face contorts, everything slipping, just for a moment. The gun shakes and his arm falls to his side, looking less like a deliberate movement than a sudden inability to support the weight.

But then he looks back at Piper, and his eyes empty out. He stares at her like a stranger, and he shakes his head before whispering, "God help you."

Then he's gone. Really, truly gone. It sinks into her, deeper and deeper in a way it hadn't back at the lifeboats.

* * *

Alex's heart is beating so hard she's certain Piper can feel it on her spine.

They don't move from their position, Alex protected behind Piper, even as Bill gets far away, walking back up the grand staircase, gun limp by his side. She can feel Piper trembling, so hard she's surprised the water isn't whirlpooling around them.

All at once, Alex _feels_ the fight drain from Piper's body, a stutter of gasping sobs ripping out of her as she nearly goes limp, looking on the edge of collapse. Alex wraps her arms around her, letting Piper turn into her and burrow into her chest, sobbing.

"It's alright," she murmurs, a little shocked by how fast tears blur her own vision, triggered as easily as a reflex. "It's alright, you're okay..."

She keeps saying that, again and again, but Alex can't remember ever being this terrified.

Piper jumped off a lifeboat, ran from safety and stared down a gun, for _Alex._ Giving up not just her family, now, not just wealth and status and ease. She has given up certain salvation.

Since Alex's mother died, no one has given up anything for her, not ever.

Since Alex's mother died, she hasn't allowed herself to have anything it would kill her to lose.

And, God, Piper is so _young. S_ he's just a goddamn kid, she is everything beautiful and she has barely gotten started. She has only just begun to discover all the wonders in her own heart, all that dazzling strength.

If it ends for her now, if she becomes a tragic story rather than a miracle of a girl, that will be because of Alex.

"Everything's going to be fine," Alex murmurs to Piper, still holding her so tight. "I won't let anything happen to you. I promise." She says it like a vow, her heart bleeding into every syllable.

* * *

 _A/N: Geez, so this was more of an action-y, plot driven chapter than anything I usually write. Feels weird. Only one more chapter to go, I think. Should be up in the next few days._

 _(Also, obviously, the source material for this AU is a pretty melodramtic tragedy - which I obviously love and adore - and while a lot of that's been softened, Bill Chapman gets a little bit of the supervillain touch. But it makes sense to me cause he's The Worst anyway and would be even more The Worst in this time period so...meh)_


	7. Chapter 7

"Piper?" Alex kisses the side of her head, working to keep her voice calm. "We need to move out of here."

Unfolding herself from Alex's chest, Piper nods, red eyed, expression slightly dazed. "What if he's waiting up there?"

"I don't know." Alex casts a look up the grand staircase, water halfway up now. "But...I think he's done with us."

Piper nods, closing her eyes and tightening her jaw. There's something so deliberate about it, such an obvious effort to put herself back together, that Alex's heart twinges. She reaches out and laces their fingers together with no intention of letting go. "Come on."

They plod through the water together, eventually going upstairs to the A-Deck foyer, now at a much more noticeable incline. There are still passengers running around, tying on lifebelts. Alex sees one abandoned in a corner, and she tugs Piper in that direction so she can pick up the lifebelt and offer it. "Here..."

Piper shakes her head. "You can take it."

Alex purses her lips, impatient. "You done much swimming, Piper?"

"No."

"Cause I grew up near a lake. Wear it." Alex helps her into the white vest, reclaiming her hand as soon as it's strapped on.

"Any chance there are any boats left?"

"We should check."

They head back outside, onto the deck and into a dense, panicked crowd. Alex draws instinctively closer to Piper as passengers streak by them. Many men run to the edges of the boat deck, tossing chairs overboard. Alex leads Piper toward the edge, leaning over to see the damage. The water level is above the deck directly below them now, and there are clumps of passengers already bobbing in the water, thrashing, attempting to get back on the ship.

Her chest tightens with fear; there so many people already fighting to live.

"Look..." Piper's pointing in another direction, where a lifeboat that seems particularly small is partially submerged, men and women in the water trying to crawl onboard as its passengers struggle to stay on. "That's a collapsible, Andrews pointed them out on the tour...they're the last to be used."

Alex meets her eyes, the knowledge of what that means passing between them. There are no more boats.

And, God, the way Piper is looking at her. Scared, yes, but also expectant, as though it's never once occurred to her that Alex will have no plan.

"We need to keep moving aft." Alex nods toward the stern, starting to look like the crest of a hill. "And...and stay on the boat as long as possible."

Piper nods an agreement, trusting her, but Alex knows it's not much of plan, just a stall tactic, but this is what Alex does: she makes the best decision for the moment, never looking ahead at the consequences.

They move to the furthest point of the A-Deck possible, where Alex clambers over the railing and lowers herself to the deck below, the only one that has access to the edge of the ship's stern. She turns and helps Piper over, takes her hand, and they join the crush of people clawing and scrambling in the same direction across the well deck.

The noise is horrible, a tornado of thundering voices, elbows and feet everywhere. Holding hands isn't enough in the throng, and Alex has her other hand locked around Piper's upper arm as they fight their way up the steep angle of the deck. There's a mighty groan and crash behind them, and Alex glances over her shoulder and sees one of the funnels topple loose into the water, almost certainly crushing dozens of bodies in the water below. She jerks her head back around, fast, just in time to witness someone leap from the rail into the water below.

They somehow manage to squeeze onto the well deck staircase, and Alex lets go of Piper and ushers her in front of her on the narrow space. She can actually feel the ship tilting further. "Alex?" Piper cries out, sounding as though she just needs reassurance Alex is still behind her.

"It's okay, Piper, just hold on. Both hands." Alex watches as Piper grips the edge of the railing on either side of her. She is breaking the moment down even more, into smaller and smaller pieces: just make it up the staircase, that's all they have to do right now, that's the only thing to worry about.

As the lights from the ship fade in and out, they make it off the stairs and onto the widest part of the stern, the very end of the ship. It's less packed there, though hundreds of passengers still struggle their way toward the railing. Alex twists her arm with Piper's before locking their fingers together, and Piper's other hand is curled around the collar of Alex's shirt at the nape of her neck.

The stern starts rising faster, the angle steepening, and Alex nearly slips once but Piper hold onto her at the waist, keeping her upright. Alex's gaze closes in on the railing at the end of the stern, now looming above them, higher in the air; few people have made it there yet, and she makes it her new goal. If she can get them there, they'll have something to hold onto, a place to wait.

"Okay?" she shouts to Piper when their eyes meet, and Piper nods, wide eyed.

A woman in front of them loses her footing and slides back toward them, fast. Alex moves instinctively out of the path, grabbing for the side railing, but Piper frees one hand and reaches down, catching the woman at the elbow and help her up. She looks back at Alex as they start to move together again, and Alex manages a smile for her.

The stern is lifting even higher now and Alex's knees are aching, her shoes slipping on the too smooth wood of the deck. But finally, _finally_ , they make it to the stern rail, and Alex hauls Piper behind her to a gap just below the flagpole. Piper lets go of Alex, wrapping her arms around the railing's bars, and Alex finds a grip on either side of Piper, pressed against her from behind. Piper turns to her side without letting go, leaning into Alex's chest.

"They'll have sent a distress signal to a rescue boat, back when it first hit," Alex says, leaning close so Piper will hear. "We just have to keep out of the water until it gets there, then...then lifeboats won't matter."

Piper nods, and lets go of the rail with one hand to wrap her arm around Alex's waist. They are wrapped together, right out in the open, and Alex thinks dimly that the only reason that can happen is because the surrounding crowd is preoccupied with not dying.

She looks down at Piper, and her throat closes up, too much emotion scratching at the walls of her chest. Alex feels like apologizing, all of a sudden, for making Piper think she would know what to do.

* * *

Piper turns her head to the side, fitting herself tighter against Alex, and she inadvertently makes eye contact with the woman beside her. She recognizes her, she thinks, from the night they'd been dancing, the chain of jumping and laughing steerage passengers. Now the woman's eyes are haunting, infinitely sad, and she's got a little boy with his arms vined around her neck, crying loud, panicked tears.

Piper drags her eyes away and ends up watching a man still struggling toward the railing slip and fall backwards, sliding on his stomach down the deck, fast. She tracks his fall until he slams into the bottom of a stairwell, going limp.

Her stomach rolls, sick with the horror of it all, and Piper doesn't want to but she can't help but wonder about her father, and Larry, and her maid Catherine...oh God, she hasn't thought of her even once, how awful and selfish -

"Close your eyes," Alex's voice is right against her ear. "Don't look, I've got you."

So Piper does; Alex is standing above her on the slope of the deck, making her appear even taller than she is and allowing Piper to press her face against Alex's collarbone. She grabs one of Alex's hands, beside her own on the railing, trying to narrow her senses. It almost works, for a moment, and then the stern tilts further, abrupt enough that a collective gasp rises from the gathered knot, and Piper quickly winds both arms through the railings, bent at the elbow and clinging from the other side. Alex drapes one arm over from the top, keeps the other firmly around Piper, holding the rail on her other side.

The lights go out and don't come back on; Piper squeezes her eyes shut again just as the stern half of the ship suddenly plunges back toward the water. A scream breaks out of her, but it's lost in chorus of others, her stomach flying up toward her chest cavity, the acidic taste of bile biting at her throat. She feels Alex press her more firmly to the rails. The ship lands at the opposite angle, tilted toward the water, and Piper's chest hits metal, hard. For a second she can't breathe.

But it rises again, their half of the ship seeming to right itself for a moment, both of them standing level. Piper twists around to look at Alex, wanting to confirm the sudden cries of relief rising from the crowd, but Alex is still grim faced. "Don't let go, Piper, hold - "

She doesn't finish the warning before the stern is rising again, much quicker this time, nearly as fast as the plummet had been moments before. Clusters of passengers go hurtling off the rail, down the deck, toward the water. Bodies have started to pile up at the forward rail.

Suddenly the comforting press of Alex's weight is gone. "We have to move!" Piper watches in horror as Alex grabs the flagpole, pulling herself up to climb over the railing to the outside of the ship.

"What?!"

Alex just nods her head, insistent, grabbing Piper's arm to help her over. Piper's shaking, terrified to move, but Alex won't let go of her. "Come on! I've got you..."

She pulls Piper over the rail just before it gets too steep, the railing going completely horizontal, parallel with the water. Around them, other passengers have done the same thing, a line of them crouching on the deck. The woman who had been beside Piper with the little boy is gone, Piper didn't see when she fell; what's left below them is a short row of passengers dangling from the rails, some with precarious finger holds, some with their forearms wound around the bars. Alex and Piper are beside each other, stretched out on their stomachs, breath fogging sharply into the sky. Alex crosses her arm over Piper's to grab the rail, and Piper sidles closer to her side like it might make them safer.

One by one, they watch passengers on the other side of the railing lose strength and let go, hurtling through air into the water far below or, more often, colliding with a lower rail, or one of the ventilators of affixed benches looming hazardous on the deck.

The ship is bobbing the slightest bit, straight in the air now, but it seems stable. Piper turns her head to look at Alex, voice trembling, "What now?"

"I don't know..." Alex's voice is small, and the way she looks back makes Piper think she might be about to apologize. "I'm not sure what - "

Suddenly the ship starts to lower them like an elevator, straight down toward the water, pulled by the suction. The dark ocean water froths white below, waiting to claim them. But then Alex starts speaking again, apparently understanding what's going on now, rushing out a frantic string of instructions as she takes off her glasses and sticks them in her pants pocket, "Okay, alright, take a deep breath and hold it right before we go into the water. The ship is going to suck us down, but just kick for the surface, and _don't stop_ \- "

And just like that Piper is crying, whimpering like a stupid little kid. This is too much, it's too hard, she is not equipped. She's a weak spoiled girl who's never had to do anything difficult, and she just wants this to not be happening at all.

"Piper?"

"I can't do it, Alex, I _can't..._ " Jesus, she can barely breathe even now. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I can't -"

Alex doesn't point out the obvious, that it doesn't matter what she _can_ or _can't_ do, that there's no longer any choice in the matter. Instead, she takes Piper hand, braiding their fingers tightly together. "Piper, you saved my life twice tonight," she says, her voice scratchy but calm, as though they have plenty of time for this conversation. "You jumped off a lifeboat and stood in front of a gun. You're the bravest person I've ever met. To the point where it's a little dumb." She smiles, and it makes Piper feel like they're somewhere else. Someplace safe, and good. "This is nothing for you. It's just swimming."

Piper has never had a chance to be brave before. She wouldn't have guessed that about herself.

The deck below them is disappearing into the water, and she feels Alex squeeze her hand. "Don't let go of my hand. Just _kick_ , Piper. And get ready to breathe - _NOW_!"

Piper draws in a cloud of air and holds Alex's hand so hard she imagines the bones bending and then everything is black and cold.

* * *

The freezing water stabs all over her body, but the cut on Alex's cheek feels like it's being torn open, the saltwater eating away at the wound. The suction is stronger than she could have guessed, pulling her down and rendering her flailing limbs ineffectual. All she can do is hold onto Piper, so Alex focuses on that, keeps her eyes open and stinging to keep Piper in sight. She reaches out with her free hand and grabs the strap of Piper's lifebelt, pulling the material so tight it's cutting into the fingers.

But Piper suddenly lurches powerfully in the other direction, the water dragging them apart, and Alex tries to latch her fingers tighter, but they're wet and straining and she can't withstand the riptide fighting her intentions.

Then Alex's hands are empty and she can't see Piper anymore and all she wants is to breathe.

Her chest is tight and aching, teeth dug into her lower lip to keep herself from inhaling on instinct, when Alex finally makes it out of the suction and kicks her way to the surface, bursting into the cold night air to find a frantic mass of thrashing, screaming passengers. Alex twists around, gaze darting wildly, but her vision is unassisted and everyone looks too similar, all those out of focus bodies with life belts and dark, wet hair.

"PIPER!" She raises her voice, trying to be heard above the cacophony of panic, terror howling through her. " _PIPER!_ "

She can't fucking believe she let go of Piper's hand.

Alex opens her mouth to shout Piper's name and she ends up swallowing the ocean into her lungs. A man is trying to climb on top of her, desperate, like she's a piece of debris. She fights her way up, swinging her elbow blindly. "Get _off_ \- " But he's wearing a lifebelt and she isn't and he pushes her under again. Struggling, Alex tilts her face up and out of the water, struggling to reach a hand up, bash him in the nose with the handcuff, but all at once Piper is there, driving the side of her fist repeatedly onto the man's nose, neck, head, screaming at him to get off.

He releases Alex and she surfaces fully, so relieved to see Piper she nearly starts sobbing. "You okay?"

Alex nods and finds Piper's hand again underwater like she's correcting a critical mistake before the disaster deepends. "C'mon, we gotta swim..."

They move through the water, breaking out of the throng of people, but the lifebelt makes Piper's strokes slow and less effective. The night is a chorus of wailing, pain, and pleas for help, but beyond the white lifebelts dotting the water, there's nothing but inky blackness in every direction. Alex can't separate the sky from the water.

She puts that out of her head, scanning the more immediate area for anything that could be used for flotation; Alex's only concern right now is getting them both out of the freezing water.

Further from the crowd now, Alex treads in one spot, stroking rhythmically to keep warm. Her chest tightens when she sees Piper, obviously struggling, her lifebelt shoved up under her chin. "Keep moving, Piper, don't stop..."

"It's so c-cold."

"I know," Alex says helplessly. "I know, just...look for something floating. Debris, wood, anything."

Piper nods, turning her head best she can, scanning the water, but she's panting hard, her lips already trembling.

Alex's gaze finally lands on something floating in the water, and premature relief ripples through her. "Look! Piper, c'mere..." She lets go of Piper's hand and grabs the lifebelt instead, fully hauling Piper behind her as she swims quickly to the object, a piece of wooden door, intricately carved, an arch cut into the side, the wood splintered at one edge.

She helps Piper climb onto it, holding the door steady while she slithers, belly down, across the length of it. Piper slides over to one side, making room for Alex, who grips an end and tries to slip on, but it instantly tilts and partially submerges, almost dumping Piper off the side.

"Alex?"

Alex grabs onto the edge of the debris, taking it in, assessing quickly. She and Piper could both fit the other way, draped across the width of it instead of across the length, but it would mean they'd only be out of the water above the torso. The way Piper's lying now, her entire body can rest above the surface.

It is an easy choice to make.

Alex eases herself to the front of the piece of wood, face to face with Piper, folding her arms over top of it. The screams of others have barely let up, but their own sudden, blessed stillness makes the moment seem quiet. "We're okay now," Alex says, her teeth chattering slightly around the words. "Stay just like that."

"Here..." Piper lifts herself up on her elbows, hands fumbling to undo the lifebelt. "Then you should take this - "

"No, no, keep it on. I don't think I'll be able to get it on in the water."

Piper's whole body is trembling, but her eyes are swirling with distress. "We can...we can swap pl-places. Take turns."

Alex shakes her head, bites her teeth hard together and makes certain her voice remains steady. "We don't need to, I'm fine. There's another ship on its way, its been on its way since we first hit." She smiles; it feels like a crack across her face. "Besides, you just saved me _again_. Let me catch up."

Piper doesn't smile back. Alex takes her hands, trying to warm them, but that's like rubbing two ice cubes together and hoping for a fire. Beneath the surface, she keeps her legs moving, chopping back and forth through the water like out of sync pendulums. Piper's eyes are glassy, and so tired. Alex tries again, "I...I would say I'm going to demand my money back but...guess I got what I paid for here." Piper gasps out a laugh. "You, though...you get a refund when we're back on land that'll...that'll pay our way to California."

" _California_..." Piper repeats softly, as though it's a place that doesn't really exist.

"Sure. We're still going, right?" Alex frees one of her hands and starts massaging the length of Piper's arms. "Be getting warm there soon...really hot summers. But there's...always a breeze at th, the beach."

Piper licks her lips, and it seems to take her a moment to catch enough breath to say, "I may be...done with the ocean for awhile."

Alex laughs, high and breathy. "That's fair."

A high pitched shriek of a sound cuts above the background hum of shouting, and Alex and Piper both twist around to look at the same time. One of the ship's officers is holding onto a chair nearby, blowing furiously on a whistle, the screech quivering but loud.

"See?" Alex says. "He...he knows the lifeboats are still close by. They had to, to row away from the suction. Now they'll organize and come b-back."

Piper nods, her eyes clinging to Alex's, so obviously wanting, _trying_ , to believe her.

Alex's throat feels worn raw from the sharp, painful breaths, so she falls silent for awhile. The shrill blast of the whistle is still piercing the air, no distinct rhythm to it, just unpredictable punctuations to the screaming. There an indistinct roar of voices mixed together, but Alex can still decipher certain cries: a howl of fear or grief, a bellowed plea for help. Alex can see Piper's listening, too, her face crumpling, panic breathing the life back into her eyes. Alex leans forward and holds her hands over Piper's ears, pressing her forehead hard against hers.

She's not sure what the hell she thinks she's protecting Piper from, what damage can possibly be kept at bay by merely muffling the constant death sounds of strangers, but Alex can't stop trying.

They are just surviving, moment to moment, and she wants to make each one as _okay_ for Piper as she can.

* * *

It will not be a hard way to die.

It doesn't hurt, not anymore. She is just tired, the sort of tired that makes sleep seem like a gift. Her legs have stopped kicking under the water, most of her body already given into the exhaustion.

Alex eyes are resting on Piper, just watching her blink and breathe. Chalk white skin and blue lips and bottomless eyes. She looks like a painting. Frightening and beautiful and clinging to Alex's hands.

No, it will not be a hard way to die. Or a hard thing to die for.

But what Alex can't accept is that she'd have no way of knowing if Piper gets saved.

So she gathers breath in her lungs and stays awake, speaking for the first time in awhile. "You alright?"

"It's g-getting...quiet."

"Yeah..." Alex swallows. The whistle has even stopped, and when she chances a look over the officer's eyes are wide and unseeing. "It sounds bad to say but th, that's probably better. If the boats came back to the crowd...they'd get swarmed. Turned over, even. B-better if they can tell many aren't still...awake. Won't be long now."

There is a long, heavy pause, and then Piper whispers, "I'm so tired, Alex." There is a plea strung through the words, her eyes bright and wet and begging for permission to let go.

Her throat knotting up, Alex chokes out the only thing she can think of to say. "I love you."

Surprise shades Piper's face, her eyes nearly warming. "You do?"

"Of course. So...you _can_ ' _t_ die, you hear me? That's what that means."

Painstakingly, Piper nods. Her hair is falling around her face, dusted with frost, but her gaze is narrow and hot, her voice almost feverish with need when she says back, "I love you, too."

* * *

After that, Alex keeps talking, blanketing Piper in words, in reasons to live.

"You've got enough material for a b-book, just from tonight...forget my life, Piper, you'll make a much bet, better hero."

and

"Lost all my drawings, you're gonna...have to put up with a lot of posing t-to rebuild the, the collection. And you know I lost...a lot of, of nudes."

and

"Since we've both had our f-fill of ocean we...can just pick someplace even I've never been...somewhere new, right in the m-middle maybe. No co, coasts."

but after awhile her voice starts to wither into a rasp, and she leans forward, pressing cold, cracked lips onto Piper's knuckles. It feels like another reason.

* * *

It's silent now, the water calm and black. Piper is watching the stars, reflected in the glassy surface, all around Alex, as though she's floating in space. Piper thinks she might be dreaming, drifting along without her own body.

She closes her eyes, it's like setting down a great weight. It would feel so nice to sleep. It wouldn't be so bad. Piper knows what Alex said, and she has been trying so hard for her, but Piper can feel herself fading, down to the heartbeat.

She is young to die, she knows that. But if she had never gotten on this ship, never met Alex, she could have survived another fifty years but not _lived_ half as much.

There is some distant noise, foggy and distorted, but Piper already feels disconnected from it, not even wondering about its source -

\- until yellow light shines on her face.

Piper shuts her eyes automatically, pain rippling through her head, but then she blinks and blinks and takes a breath, her vision clearing enough to see a lifeboat creeping slowly across the water.

A boat came back just like Alex said. She wasn't lying this time.

"Alex." The name comes out thin, barely a squeak. Alex doesn't answer, Alex can probably barely hear her. She swallows several times, glancing back to make sure the boat is still there, that it's real. "Alex, th, there's...'s a boat." She waits. " _Alex_."

But Alex doesn't answer

or open her eyes

or breathe.

Her face is rimmed with frost, hair frozen to the wood of the door; she looks like something made of porcelain, barely real, but Piper reaches the hand not holding onto Alex's and shakes her by the shoulder. "Alex?" Her voice is a rusty creak, but Piper still tries her best to turn it into a command. " _Alex,_ wake up!" Piper touches her, bare fingers on Alex's face; her skin is like ice. " _Please,_ just...breathe for me, Alex come _on_. The boat's back. Alex?"

Piper loves her she loves her she _loves her_ and that means she can't be dead, Alex _said_ that's what that meant. Alex said she was a survivor she said everything would be okay she said -

"You _lied_ ," Piper chokes out, feeble, unraveling. Tears flood her eyes and stay warm for only seconds; it feels like they may freeze there, leaving her vision eternally clouded with fresh, crushing grief. Her forehead thumps on top of their joined hands, and she can't even start sobbing, doesn't have the breath or strength to even give Alex that.

She can hear the dim, distorted voice calling out from the boat now. "Helloooooo! Is anyone alive out there?" and Piper doesn't answer because it doesn't feel as though she is.

But then the sound of Alex voice fills her up like an ache.

 _Really, Piper? Everything you've done tonight and you give up before this one last thing? You're braver than that._

That word again. Brave.

Piper wants Alex to have been right about her.

She lifts her head, trying to keep Alex's body out of her peripheral vision, and calls out for the boat. "Here! Come back!" It's so weak, dissolving like the puff of condensation her breath makes in the air. She swallows, tries again, but the boat is moving in the opposite direction, the lantern light like a distant star.

Piper squeezes her eyes shut, trying to think, calm arriving again in the form of Alex's voice.

 _You're not going to be able to yell...for once. But it's alright, Piper, just look around. Find something to make noise. You can do this._

Her eyes find the officer's dead body ten feet away, his silver whistle still glinting from between his lips. Surging with a just-in-time sense of urgency, Piper starts to sidle off the door before realizing her hand is actually frozen to Alex's. She has to forcibly pull them apart.

The sound it makes is too quiet, a tiny pop, like the thing she's breaking is unimportant. Piper wants to be brave, but she doesn't think she has the courage for this, for clawing out a chunk of her heart and dropping it to the bottom of the Atlantic. She kisses Alex's knuckles and Alex's voice in her head says _Don't look_ ; Piper closes her eyes, doesn't watch while Alex disappears into the black infinity of the water.

A scream carves itself out of her chest and her throat but it comes out like the wounded whine of a tiny animal as Piper splashes into the ocean herself, limbs stiff, barely functional. She somehow manages to work her arms enough to get over to the officer's body, where she grabs the whistle from the man's lifeless mouth, her fingers trembling around it. Dizzy with effort, Piper exhales with all the strength left in her lungs, the sound skittering across the still water.

The light lands on her face again, and she keeps blowing as the boat starts toward her, breath still puffing out into nothingness even when the officer on board takes the whistle from her mouth and pulls her into the boat.

She lies on her back on the floor of the boat, wedged between benches, unable to even sit herself up. There are blankets being piled on top of her, stiff and heavy, and voices that keep saying she's _safe, now_.

Her vision is blurred and her lungs are sore and all Piper wants is to be able to really, properly cry.

* * *

She wakes up to a sky painted with dim streaks of color and the excited shout of a man beside her, another shivering refugee, standing up and pointing above them. Piper's motionless except for her eyes, following the aim of his finger and just barely perceiving the looming shadow of a ship.

Piper closes her eyes, exhausted, as underwhelmed as she was five days, a lifetime, ago when she first glimpsed the _Titanic_. Even though this ship means food and warmth. It means rescue.

But she only wanted this with Alex.

Swaddled in one of the blankets, pulled into a hood over her head, Piper stays numb to the joy and relief around her, numb to everything. She slips into who she used to be, quiet and still, no extremes; Piper doesn't want that to go away. She already has the vague, lurking awareness of the enormity of what she'll soon have to let herself feel.

Someone gives her tea and a slice of bread, and Piper's mind is functioning just enough to stay close to the crowd of steerage passengers, a huddled, shellshocked mass on the deck of the Carpathia. She's deliberately avoided the officers walking around with ledgers, taking a census of the crowd and creating several pockets of distress as women desperately ask for names, unable to accept their loved ones haven't made aboard. Their fear and anguish roll over Piper without making a dent.

At some point, Piper catches the calm and authoritative voice of an officer speak from just behind where she's sitting alone on a bench. "You won't find any of your people down here, sir...mostly steerage."

The words strike some nerve, and Piper turns without meaning to, her eyes locking with Larry's. He looks disheveled and silly in a wrinkled tuxedo, and his eyes widen when he sees Piper, running over to her. "Piper...your parents and I have been looking for you - "

" _Parents_?" She blinks at him, uncomprehending. "How did you and Father - "

"He'd made a deal with one of the officers..." Larry has just enough self-awareness to look slightly abashed. "Paid our way onto a lifeboat, one of the collapsibles."

Piper inhales a harsh, angry breath as she takes that in, fury crawling out of the gaping space in her chest and kicking around her insides, scaling the column of her throat and rounding into swollen, waiting screams.

Alex is dead.

Alex is dead and it's the first time Piper's thought it like that.

Alex is _dead_ _._

And Piper's father and Larry bought their rescue.

She feels unhinged, shaking with rage, but Piper forces herself to simply meet Larry's eyes and say, voice coiled tight around control, "That will play well in the papers. Lawrence Bloom the third buys a spot that could have gone to a woman."

The relief and reconciliation drains instantly from his expression.

"That headline will come first," she continues. "Followed by one about Bloom's engagement being severed. Presumably because he's a shameful coward."

Larry's eyes flash fury, and he spats out in reply, "Is that really what you want to do, Piper? I had no intentions to reveal your recent indecencies, but if public humiliation is what you're after...we both know I hold a stronger hand."

"Fine. Tell everyone," she says easily. "That would be worse for you than for me. I don't give a damn. Not anymore."

He flinches, the slightest bit, bluff called. Then his head tilts, eyes narrowing as he studies her, assessing her present circumstances. "So I take it Alex didn't - "

" _Don't_." She's on her feet in a flash, one hand at his collar, the other balled into a fist that's begging for violence.

She is hurting and she wants to make someone else bleed.

Larry wrenches himself free of her easily, but he takes a step back, unable to hide the fear in his eyes. "What is it you want, Piper?"

" _Nothing_." The word feels torn from her, thick and trembling with emotion. "I want precisely _nothing_ from you, ever again. We no longer exist for each other. You shall not see me again, or attempt to find me. And _you_ get to keep your hollow honor."

Larry seems quietly stunned by the proclamation. Finally, he stammers, "What do I tell your parents?"

Piper only has to think for a moment. "Tell them their daughter died with the Titanic." Her voice catches. "It's true enough. And you can grieve publicly and gain some sympathy and then you can find someone who actually loves you."

Larry's face is stricken, real hurt etched into his features. "Piper..."

She swears it's Alex's voice again, telling her what to say next, though Piper never told Alex this.

"And your father may want to check _my_ father's accounts before signing a business deal," she tells him, stone faced once again. "There's no money left." Taken aback, Larry gapes at Piper in undisguised shock, but she has no interest in waiting for that knowledge to slowly sink in. Turning away from him, she mutters, "You should go."

It's silent for so long that Piper assumes he's gone, when suddenly a hand snakes over her shoulder; Larry's dangling his gold pocketwatch in front of her, a family heirloom. "Take it," he urges, soft. "You...you know what it's worth."

She accepts the offering without hesitation, or thanks. Larry left Alex chained in that office, and he stood there and watched while her father kept her off a lifeboat. He is partly to blame.

This time Piper hears his retreating footsteps, and she closes her eyes, allowing herself her very first moment of relief.

She never sees him again.

* * *

It's raining when they reach New York, after three days of Piper hiding out in steerage, confident in the fact that her parents, even amid this tragedy, will not mix with the commoners. She hasn't spoken to anyone since Larry, has closed herself off and wished, in the worst moments, for the cold isolation of the ocean water.

She stands on the deck and gazes up at the Statue of Liberty, listening to Alex's voice in her head, telling her everywhere they would go together. Alex, who told Piper from the beginning that she never made plans, but made her so many fragile glass promises.

Someone's hand touches her shoulder and Piper stiffens, whirling around in a panic expecting, irrationally, to see her father. Instead it's an immigration officer with a ledger and pen. "Can I get your name, love?"

She remembers what she told Larry. Piper Chapman, the dutiful daughter, the society girl, the fiancee...she died on the Titanic. Piper Bloom, the admired wife, will mercifully never exist.

"Piper Vause," she tells him in a calm, clear voice, binding herself to Alex with the only thing she has left of her.

* * *

She goes to Massachusetts first.

That's where Piper sells Larry's watch, and it keeps her up there for awhile. Alex's voice follows her around, repeating stories from that day they'd sat in her bunk while Alex described her hometown, swearing she'd take Piper there, show her around. On her own, Piper finds the lake where Alex swam as a kid, the bookstore she'd loved. She pays for rooms in a rundown inn, switching every few days so she can imagine that at least one is among of the many places where Alex and her mother lived. She wanders cemeteries but never finds a headstone with Diane Vause's name, but then Alex never mentioned whether she had one.

She buys a leather bound notepad the same color of Alex's sketchbook, and she stays in Massachusetts for just over a month, writing her first ever novel in a furious haze of grief and anger.

The engagement ring goes to a jeweler, and Piper takes the money and rides a train to California. She wears slacks sometimes, worrying the suspenders between her fingers and pretending they're someone else's, but Piper still prefers dresses, the sort of simple cotton frocks that would have appalled her mother.

The Santa Monica pier is everything Alex described, and Piper feels safe there, far away. When newspaper headlines begin to fill up with carnage and war, she is not surprised. Piper knows the world now. Unsinkable ships sink and the warmest hearts freeze and she barely remembers what it feels like to be at peace.

She writes another book, this one about a homeless artist, a female thief ripping wildly through her messy life. It is Piper's second novel, but after a year it becomes the first to be published. She can never look at the covers, even rips them off her own copies, because the art is all wrong and the face of the hero is never how she remembers it.

Piper never stops missing her. Five days of Alex, of living deeply and wildly in love, and it was both not enough and more than Piper ever thought she could have. But it's never beautiful, the grief, and there is nothing pure about the loss. Piper doesn't learn a goddamn thing from Alex's death. Only ever her life.

Her books become well known - for a woman, always _for a woman_ \- and Piper Vause gains a whispered reputation in the literary world for being reclusive and solitary. She never even allows herself to be photographed.

The years cycle by. Piper travels and writes. As time passes, only a few images of Alex remain vivid: in her suspenders and stolen coat and lopsided hat, smirking at Piper with a cigarette between her teeth on the deck of the ship; hot eyed and reaching in the boiler room, in Piper's mind a mythical figure rising from the steam; and, finally, in nightmares, porcelain and pale and gone, floating in the ocean, drowned in the reflection of stars.

After a decade, she's almost forgotten what Alex sounded like, the pitch and cadence of her voice, but Piper always knows right away when a thought that speeds through her head is courtesy of Alex. She's always there, even decades later, always nudging Piper toward strength, reminding her where she keeps it.

Piper Vause turns sixty-six the year her final novel is published. It is her nineteenth book to be released to the public, but it's the first one she ever wrote, and she can't help but smile a little at the idea of it, the raw, open wound feeling of a seventeen year old in love attributed to an old woman. And yet it is still utterly familiar, a touchstone to the moment her heart finished forming.

At seventeen, lonely and lost in the place where Alex grew up, Piper had taken the tip of a pen and sliced herself open, bleeding and bleeding onto pages signed with her new name. She had told their story exactly as it had happened, every word an all too tender bruise. She had nothing of Alex's, not a single sketch or even a broken lens from her glasses, so she had poured it all between two covers and carried it on her back through all the years that followed.

Forty-nine year later, Piper reads her own words, readying them for a publisher she believes will finally accept a story of two women in love, and she makes just one alteration.

On the pages, her typewriter pounding out a desperate, belated rescue, Piper saves Alex at last. She builds the happy ending they never had.

It is her final book, but her first and only love story.

* * *

 _A/N: Sorry, gang. I know a lot of reviews were mostly focused on it not ending this way, but I decided definitively before I published the first chapter, and haven't wanted to waver.  
_

 _Feel free to bug the shit out of me about it (i.e. discuss?) on Tumblr or PM, but for now, I'd love to hear what you thought of the chapter itself ;)_


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